Where do YOU practice driving?

[Hawiian Cadder]

We practice in the school kitchen / language arts room. It is just large enough for a full Field. we also practice in the Gym, but there isn't any carpet so it can be deceiving.

[R1ffSurf3r]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

Really? Must be hard to practice if it rains.

i have to admit, wet carpet and slippery tubes weren't exactly ideal sometimes. or trying to throw tubes in a massive crosswind. but on a nice day i wasn't complaining!

[cadmanDOM910]

This year my team used our school's music room which isn't being used much for music any more due to the tiny choir we have. Anyway, we have carpet about the length of the field and a little smaller width wise. We use a rack we made out of pvc and 2x4s as well as a moveable "wall" that the human player has to throw over. We are allowed to keep the field up during build season and competition season and then we have to tear it down. In years previous we just practiced in the build area, even if it meant removing some ceiling tiles to give our arm room to move like in 07.

[maxwellt]

we practice just about any in our school just so that we have clearance for our robot like this year' robot and any where we can put a carpet. but we practiced outside on the capet if the weather was nice or in the school's cafeteria on the carpet if we could use it

[Jeremy Germita]

We have quite a few spaces available to practice.

1. Our shop. When not in use by the entire team, the available space for driving is near equal to field size. it is about 5 feet shorter(49') and 8 feet less wide(19') but the usable space is not perfectly rectangular.

2. Lancaster HS has a large quad area that we use on occasion. Our drivers set aside a day each month to try to practice here. It is an extremely large area, and if we wanted to, could set up several full fields here. The one catch is weather. Living where we do, the weather is not too favorable for driving. During build, it is windy, occasionally rainy, and cold. The wind can kick up some dust from down the road. Electronics don't like dust and water. Drivers don't like freezing our fingers off

3. The Gyms. Occasionally, the gyms can be reserved for robotics. For logomotion, we never used it for any actual driving, but we did use it for training human players.

4. Some local hotels expressed interest in letting us use their conference rooms in the late stages of build for drive practice.

We typically have movable field elements that can be transported from place to place

If anyone wants any insight into our practice schedule....
Off/Pre season: Our main drivers try to get biweekly practice in the fall. Others try for weekly practices. Some of our drivers are on our FTC team and get some practice out of that, also.
Build season: We try to get as much practice in as the build schedule will allow.

[mrs. p]

Originally Posted by R1ffSurf3r

the great outdoors

where we experience torrential rains, tornado warnings, hurricane warnings. you would be amazed how fast we can take down a field and roll up the carpet when the rain drops start falling.... one of these days we will get an indoor practice area

[yarden.saa]

2010 - our shop was in the 2 nd floor but we had to move to another building to practice, we couldn't remain the field so we build it every time..
2011 - we practiced in our school library which was closer and had already a carpet, but we are not allowed to get there any more because we dameged the carpet.
2012 - we are moving to a new shop in the 1st floor, 1 meter from our shop there is a space(with high ceiling) for almost a full field.

[onecoolc]

We are lucky enough to have a local and generous sponsor (Discover Technology) that gives the three local teams room in a warehouse. Every year we build a complete field for scrimmage and practice. The base dimensions (walls and carpet) stay up year-round, so it's never built completely from scratch.

For normal testing, we build the key elements of the field and keep them in our school's shop, dragging them out into the hallway/cafeteria area when necessary.

[1493kd]

We are lucky enough to have a full sizes field to practice on in the area. However with legal issues of teachers driving students and school hours it is hard to get kids to the field during the week after school to practice ( current practice field is about 15 minutes away).

I would like to be able to set up and take down a small area of carpet and some field elements after school so our drivers can practice right at school and not have to worry about students transportation issues.

We have in the past tried to use a section of carpet on the school floor but it would just bunch up wasn't very successful. Has anyone had luck with a system that you put down and take up everyday? If so do you have any suggestions.

[c.shu]

We have a large engineering room that we share with some of the classes at the school. There is enough room to set up some game elements for one side of the field. The past few years we have set up a full field (half field this year) in the adjacent gymnasium for a week 0 event.

[prismiko]

Our school doesn't have much space. We build in the Biology lab on the 6th floor and during the first half of the season this year, we had to clean up every day so students can come in the mornings to do their labs.

We usually practice in the hallway and have enough carpet for about a quarter of the field. The carpet is rolled up and stored in the back of a classroom at the end of the day. The main game elements (chute, platform, step, totes) are put back into a corner of the lab or in our storage room (a.k.a. repurposed boys' bathroom).

When the athletic department is done using the gym in the basement, we do get permission to practice there but have to clean up afterwards and be careful not to scuff up the floor so we generally don't use it until we have a completed robot.

All in all, we get a lot of practice setting up and taking down our mini-field.

[1493kd]

Originally Posted by prismiko

We usually practice in the hallway and have enough carpet for about a quarter of the field. The carpet is rolled up and stored in the back of a classroom at the end of the day. The main game elements (chute, platform, step, totes) are put back into a corner of the lab or in our storage room (a.k.a. repurposed boys' bathroom).


All in all, we get a lot of practice setting up and taking down our mini-field.

Do you ever have any issues with carpet bunching up on fast change of directions etc. Any weights, etc to keep it in place?

[Sperkowsky]

we drive in our hallway....we sometimes are allowed in the auxillary gym but thats on a good day. The good news is this years game makes it easy to practice as theres not much to it. The only issue I have is the fact that each bin costs 45 dollars. Thats a lot of money for our team and to do our autonomous strategy we need 2 bins.

[jagoldman]

My school's 30 year old and heavily used carpet is very similar to what at the competition. Additionally, for our main driving practice we commandeer the dinning hall (which has carpet floors). For our smaller tests, we go into the hall or just drive around the classroom. Almost the entire school is covered with this carpet so our leaves are made pretty easy.

[Addison4300]

At our school, we have a 2nd robotics room we call the "robotics lab." We have a half size practice field set up in it.