Custom Driver Stations

[MrTechCenter]

You always want to design your driver station around the functions of your robot and what the driver(s) like. You also have to take into account the methods by which your robot carries-out its actions, like if it uses sensors or limit switches or etc.

We've had some pretty simple driver stations in the past consisting of nothing but joysticks (or in our case, one joystick and a steering wheel) and a gamepad because that's simply what worked best for us for that particular robot. Other times, we've done more complicated stuff such as using arcade buttons (this year, we had 5 arcade buttons with each button corresponding to a certain height for our lift and the buttons were placed in such a manner that it followed the shape of the driver's hand, meaning the first button was where his thumb was and each of the other four buttons were where his other fingers were). Back in 2011 we even built a custom controller using the Cypress and a potentiometer to mimic the motion of the arm on the robot, meaning that the position of the arm on the robot directly corresponded to the position that the controller was in, in real time.

If you're going to do custom I/O on the driver station, I highly recommend using the TI Launchpad that all teams received in their KOPs this year, it works great and I personally think it's a lot better than the Cypress we've had to use for several years. Let me know if you have additional questions, our team has won four Innovation in Control awards since 2012 so we've played around with all types of controllers and I/O over the years.