Drive Team Chemistry

[lark95]

I have been on the drive team as primary driver for two years and had the privilege of being able to watch 3 years of of our teams previous drive teams work together. One thing i have noticed is that some years are better than others.

I have noticed a couple of key elements that contribute to a very professional and competent drive team.

The first would be that the best drive teams do not always have the best drivers when they are first chosen. When picking a drive team i would pick dedication and perseverance any day over the fastest time around an obstacle course. drive team members need to be extremely dedicated. Arguably the most dedicated members of the team, willing to spend hours every day driving the robot, and repeating drills over and over. They need to be perfectionists, understanding that they are never done. Even if they've become "good" at driving, there is always more they can work on. They should never need to be asked to practice, or to do a drill again, or pestered to practice more. They need to want to do it themselves, and get angry and hold others accountable when for some reason they can't practice, or something is preventing them from practicing.
Good reflexes, good decision-making, the knowledge of what can break and when it's all right to push your robot that extra step. Look for people who will back up to get a ball instead of turning around to pick it up, then turn around again to score it. Look for people who understand things will break, and that in some matches you may need to keep going even if it gets worse (elimination matches or sometimes high-priority matches) and some matches where it's alright to stop and be careful for the duration. Also, make sure they're aggressive enough to not back away from hitting something for a point, but not overly aggressive to get penalties or to hit things just to hit things. It's a balance that is hard to find and realize sometimes.

The second thing that i have noticed is that there has to be one person on the drive team that is the leader. A person who is willing to take responsibility for the others and is willing to take the flak for a bad match or poor performance. this person will grow to become the drive team captain. This is not a spot that should be assigned, but it is something that will just happen in a good drive team.
Having one person that is the drive captain gets rid of allot of problems. If you have a very skilled but meek driver this driver will no longer be worried about messing up but will be able to focus on driving and not the consequences of a small or large mistake.
There have been a few times when i have seen Key drive team members tell other students and mentors on the team to come to them first with any complaints or problems with the drive team. Unfortunately this was right after a mentor had just chewed out a freshman secondary drive and sent them off sobbing. Behavior like this should be completely unacceptable on a FIRST team.

The last thing is certainly more of a personal preference than anything. I feel that you should not switch out drive team members at a regional because you think they are not driving good enough. This is just always put a added pressure on the drive team that really is not needed. Of course an exception to this would be if a drive team member was doing something against team policy for all students.

Well that is my thoughts on drive team. I could be way off my rocker but take from it what you want.

P.S. Here is a paper that i have. I did not write it . It is just a bunch of stuff off of Chief Delfi that i sort of compiled.

[Lij2015]

The drive coach should be making big picture decisions like overall strategy or where to place a stack and pointing stuff out that the driver doesn't see and talking to other teams to tell them how to get the ball to you. If you want things to work without too much argueing they shouldn't literally be dictating movements and stuff. Giving your driver some independence will work wonders for you. However if they're defiant then kick them out of there.

I've had three operators over the years and the way you make it work is to make sure that your operator takes orders from the driver and no one else. The driver tells them when to shoot, when to deploy the pickup, when to move the stacker and so on. Not the coach.

[MrMARVINMan]

Hi! I'm the freshman co-pilot from MARS 2614, which makes it sound like I don't have a lot of experience on the subject. But id like to offer some advice anyways, as I've seen multiple drive teams throughout my family's FRC career.

I think the biggest element of drive team chemistry is between the driver and the co-pilot (or operator for some teams) and not between those two and the back coach. On our team, the back coach is in charge of managing our alliance strategy and doesn't completely focus on our own robot. This is a relatively new trend on our team, and it has only been since last year when our co-pilot had virtually nothing to do and everything was driver controlled. This year, the co-pilot is in charge of managing the lift system but also telling the driver where to go or what to do.

The back coach - while important - is more necessary to relaying back to the co-pilot what other teams are doing and what to watch out for. In turn, the co pilot relays this to the driver. This may seem inefficient, but it works extremely well on our team.

Also, drive team chemistry can only be forged through common experience. Our team participated in two off-season events with our "beta" drive team. As our drive team was all seniors last year, we needed to train new drivers and we found this to be the best way to do it. The new drive team receives important experience in tense situations without the entire world on their heads. This creates a common experience for people that don't necessarily know each other. I for one, didn't know my driver at all last spring and now we are best friends!

Practice, practice, practice! This is another important factor in forging a successful drive team. The more practice they have, the more decisions they have to make, the better they are at making them. Our drive team practiced every week on Saturday, sunday, and Wednesday and we ended up as the finalists on Hopper division for the first time! (Just another great experience for us)

Finally, my suggestions for the best drivers have to be people with these qualities:

1. Calm and Collected (good under pressure) - while people may not show it, some people can lose focus under the weight of their teams success. A driver needs to be able to make the right call 95% of the time. Nobody is perfect, but it would help a lot to get close.

2. Nice and Not-easily Angered - I myself admit that I am quick to anger, and that is not a good quality. Drivers need to be able to handle a situation without yelling at whoever is next to them. That just causes unnecessary stress.

3. Polite but Firm - a team driver needs to be polite to other teams, but at the same time be willing to push them around. Imagine that your team needs two cans to score well, while another team needs two cans but is less consistent. The driver needs to be able to negotiate for those cans without seeming arrogant.

4. Know How To Make a Robot Work - this quality is my personal opinion and not necessarily the best for your team. I prefer to have members of the mechanical and CAD teams as members of the drive team. These people know the limits of the robot and will push it to the max without taking it too far.

That's my (hopefully) helpful suggestion for you. Hope you take some of these things into account the next time you are selecting a drive team.

[Monochron]

Sit down with your drive team and explain everything you wrote up there to them. Tell them exactly what aspects you think the drive team needs and discuss a plan to get to that point. It can be anything from more drive practice to "silly" driving goals to totally separate team building activities.

Give it a couple months, and if things still aren't clicking then consider replacing one or two of them. If you do have to replace them have a frank conversation with the new drive team about what is expected out of a drive team and then make absolutely sure that you are able to take them to an off season event or two.

[pmangels17]

As far as selecting members of the drive team, we usually use members of the build team (not necessarily of any particular subteam) to drive, operate (we call the co-pilot the operator), and a mentor to coach. Sometimes if we have particular code/electronics/connection issues, we put a programmer at operator for a couple matches just to make sure everything is going well.

We've more or less had one coach for the past few years, and honestly that is what clicks our drive team together. Our coach is loud and communicative, and we have one rule behind the glass. Whatever the coach says, goes. As a driver or operator, do what the coach says, always. The coach can see the big picture better than the driver. I've made the mistake of not listening to the coach before to do something I thought was better, and in all of those cases I was wrong. Also, if you do what the coach says, and something goes wrong, the responsibility doesn't fall on the driver, which can be a big stress on high schoolers sometimes.

Between the driver and operator, it is important to have them practice together, and work out a good system to communicate between each other. Your drive team performance is proportional to the amount of practice time they have together. When I was a driver (in 2011), my operator and I came up with command words for every task, and standardized what we called each function. If we wanted to pick up a tube, it was always a conversation like this: "Go to pickup position," "Ready," "Pickup tube," "Done." I never said "get ready to get the tube," or "ok now you should grab it." This way we always knew exactly what was happening. After 2011 I only drove sparingly, as a backup and during offseason competitions. This meant a new set of challenges, especially when at offseason events we try to get as many people as possible behind the glass. However, even so, the same strategy applied. Clear communication.

Finally, the glue that I believe holds the drive team together, is the human player. I acted as the primary human player for our team from 2012-2014, and in addition to my normal job during the game, I made sure to yell out the time left in the match in fifteen second intervals. Everyone on our alliance always knew how much time was left, and not a single coach or driver had to look up to check. That meant they could spend more time focusing on the match, and match flow when this happens is markedly better.

If you encourage these things with your current drive team, you should see improvement in performance. If you don't like what you see still, now that it is the offseason it isn't going to be detrimental to try switching things up behind the glass