Drivers Control

[Walter Deitzler]

3397 has always used Logitech joysticks.

2010: 1 joystick. Had arcade style turning with a single trigger to active the ball shooter mechanism.

2011: We used two joysticks, one for the drive, arcade style, and one for the arm. It was an elevator, so as we pulled back the joystick, the arm would raise. Push it forward, it would lower.

2012: We also used two joysticks here. One controlled mecanum wheels. It would drive like arcade, but when we needed to crab, we would push the side buttons on top of the controller and it would crab. The other joystick had one button to lift the elevator, and the trigger to start the flywheel and shoot the balls.

2013: We used 3 joysticks. 2 were used to control the tank drive that we had this year, 1 was used for the arm. While it was a rotary arm instead of an elevator, it worked the same way as our 2011 arm. Pull back to lift, push foreword to lower. We had a trigger that would slowly push disks out of our arm, and button to suck them in, and a button to quickly "vomit" them out of our arm. (We did not shoot disks, more details on that, go here.)

Overall, I liked driving our 2012 robot the best, because it was, plain and simple, so much fun. Our most effective drive system was probably when we went with arcade in 2011, but that is just because we were used to it. This was out first year trying tank, so we hope to have a better control system and a bit more practice with the style by the time our next competition (CTTD) comes around.

On a side note: What steering wheels to teams use and where do they get them?