Pit Crews

[eschneider63]

Just wondering what other teams' limitations on pit crew sizes are. Team 1153 is hoping to incorporate a cycling system so that everyone who wants to be in pits has the opportunity to be there at some time, just not all at once. We will keep the drive team and safety captain in the pits (5 people), and want to rotate other students and mentors that want to or need to be in the pits for safety and crowding reasons. If your team has a similar system or a limit on the amount of people in your pit, please let us know, we would love your input! Thank you

[messer5740]

Our drive team usually stays around the pit (especially if they designed or fabricated key designs of the robot) but we realized that a good practice for the drive team is to debreif and talk about what went good and what went bad during the last match. They usually will take this short meeting elsewhere, thus freeing up space in the pit. We also have a 'talker' who answers any scouting questions so the people who maintain the robot are not distracted. Others swap throughout the day, cycling from those who organize the pit when the drive team is in que and those who fix the robot and swap bumpers. You can have many people do these jobs throughout the day in different cycles.

[CalTran]

In a 10x10 pit? The drive team and safety captain + robot and tools sometimes is pushing it. You might be able to go up to 8 semi-comfortably, but anything past that won't be very fun.

[Moskowapplepi]

We have 1-2 mentors, 2-4 rotating pit crew members, the drive team , and the safety captain but we tend to expand out of the pit itself
For our pit crews we have 3 teams of 3 assigned each tournament, and they all got about half a day in the pit. The teams have captains that are on the playoff pit crew where we have no more than 7 people actively working in the pit on the robot(includes mentors, pit crew, and 1 drive team member or safety captain)

[GeeTwo]

On our team, pit crew selection is almost as rigorous as drive crew selection. At any given time, someone in the pit needs to know every system on the robot, and all have to have demonstrated an ability to work quickly and handle troubleshooting and repairs. We usually have one mentor on safety/supervisory watch, and solid representatives of the control, drive chassis, and various manipulator crews (there is overlap among these), with a programmer on call. When things get tight, the mentor moves out of the pit into the nearby walkway.

Whenever work is taking place on the robot, we have a limit of 4-6 people in the pit at a time, depending on the amount of gear and the size of the robot. Last year it was four (big robot, lots of shelves and benches). This year we allowed five due to the smaller robot and storing stock and other occasional-use COTS parts in the trailer, using less pit space for storage. (Occasionally we had a sixth supervising from our "secret passage" which was cut off in the corner behind two toolboxes.) In my pit tours over the years I have overheard many other teams' pit limits, and the vast majority were in the four to six range.

The drive crew spends very little time in the pit apart from a quick turnover with the pit crew as they drop off and pick up the robot (mostly problems encountered, problems solved, problems mitigated) - when not in the queue, on the field, or tending to needs of the flesh, they're discussing strategy with the scouting crew or our upcoming alliance partners.

[Type]

I'm on a small team of 9 so we have our coder to help test the robot and make sure everything is functionally correct, then next we have our drivers/ team captains, one helped build the robot so they know it fairly well and they are both there is general to let us know of any concerns they had while driving, like one time we just couldn't drive straight at all, or barely drive and they let us know (even though it was obvious from the stands). We next have the lead builder and one of the other main builders, following with our build Coach and lead build mentor. Pretty much no one else is suppose to be in the pits, even with the small amount we have it can get crowded after filling it with part storage and tool boxes.

[Sperkowsky]

This year we adopted a policy allowing only 1 person as "pit crew" and to answer questions + drive team + a single mentor. The safety judges really enjoyed this. The key is to make sure you have someone on every sub team also on drive team.

[Edxu]

We assign a Pit Crew that this year has 3 Mechanical, 1 Energy Systems and 1 Programmer with 1 mentor standing by.

We try and keep our Drive Team out of the pit as much as possible for a few reasons:
-Drive Team Debrief is extremely important. We have a team member whose job at comp is to record and bring match video to the pits from the stands. This lets our drive team reflect and think about what they would've done differently during that match, or to see if they could've made some different calls.
-Drive team needs to rest and re-focus. If you put all the pressure of driving/operating and then fixing the robot on a short deadline on the same few people, they'd have to be superhuman to not burn out quickly. Giving the drivers a chance to rest and re-focus also lets them start every match anew.
-In the case of a long turnaround between matches, the Drive Team also has a chance to go to the stands and watch other team's matches if they want to. This gives them a chance to see what other drivers are doing, and maybe they'll discover a new technique or habit that they want to learn and improve on.

We also try and keep general team members out of the pits when possible, because as you mentioned it gets crowded and by extension a little less safe if there are a lot of people in the pits. In fact, we ask them to stay away entirely when the pit crew is at work or the robot is returning from a match.

[Oromus]

For us, we have three main groups of students in the pit at a given moment: the drive team, our two pit managers, and the current scheduled pit shift students. Sometimes it gets a tad crowded, but it winds up working well for us. The roles those groups play while in the pit are as follows:

Drive team - Almost every year, our drive team members have also been students that have heavily contributed to the mechanical, electrical, and programming aspects of the robot. This makes them the prime candidates for robot repair/upgrades during competitions, and so we generally have them stay with the robot the majority of the competition.

Pit Managers - Our pit managers are the other two static members of the pit crew. Chosen from the backup driver and manipulator roles, they both provide well-rounded skill (one being a mechanic and the other being a programmer/electrician) and an easily accessible backup driveteam if needed. They're also here for taking main control of robot repairs and improvements when the drive team needs a break. Between them and our drive team, we usually have 5 students in the pit that provide the range of skill we need to stay operational. For an example, this year this had 3 mechanics and 2 programmer/electricians in the pit at all times.

Pit Shift Students - We have a competition schedule that consists of groups of students traveling around doing different tasks; pit scouting, cheering, stands scouting, and pit shifts, mainly. These students are here for extra assistance when needed, talking to judges and scouts, and for "holding down the fort" when the robot leaves for matches.

[GRSICP]

We create a schedule involving the following positions:

Pit Lead - Makes sure things run smoothly, go through the robot checklist before and after matches, in charge of repairs, lead person in the pits

Pit Assistant - helps with repairs, takes instructions from pit lead

Pit Safety - keeps pit clean, makes sure safety regulations are followed, answer questions about our safety program

Pit Ambassador - hands out buttons/brochures, general spokesperson

Pit Extra - helps out in pit if needed, basically is on on-call

In addition, we have one mentor who is either in or near our pit.

[Moskowapplepi]

Just realized, my first response may have left out programming, drive team abilities, and our judge speaker.
We have our main programmer and a general programmer on the drive team. We also have 2 people that are essentially mechanical.our judge speakers tend to be the pit crew heads or a versatile member of the team to speak

[natejo99]

Our 3-student drive team is always in the pits, along with our safety captain and 2 more students for our pit crew. Our drive coach and 1-2 other mentors are also usually there. I wouldn't recommend more than that, because we are usually pretty crowded as it is.

[Ninjastahr]

For jobs we have:

Drive Team: Three members; the Human Player also does PR, the driver is a programmer and Team Captain, the button monkey (runs the xbox controller) and drive captain are probably the two most capable mechanical people on the team.

Pit Crew: One "battery manager," the two mechanical people from the drive team, and maybe one extra from the stands.

Programmers: One non-drive team programmer (me) and the drive team programmer.

Public Relations: Two people, so either or both can talk to judges (also helps with times when multiple teams are pit scouting our team)

Mentors: One to three mentors, depending on what's broken.

Other than that, our safety captain is also the button monkey (not much happens in the pit when the robot is in a match, mostly cleanup and PR)

EDIT:
Total number of people: 8-10

[messer5740]

Originally Posted by Ninjastahr

For jobs we have:

Drive Team: Three members; the Human Player also does PR, the driver is a programmer and Team Captain, the button monkey (runs the xbox controller) and drive captain are probably the two most capable mechanical people on the team.

Pit Crew: One "battery manager," the two mechanical people from the drive team, and maybe one extra from the stands.

Programmers: One non-drive team programmer (me) and the drive team programmer.

Public Relations: Two people, so either or both can talk to judges (also helps with times when multiple teams are pit scouting our team)

Mentors: One to three mentors, depending on what's broken.

Other than that, our safety captain is also the button monkey (not much happens in the pit when the robot is in a match, mostly cleanup and PR)

EDIT:
Total number of people: 8-10

Battery manager is a big one...Our bot lost comms multiple times due to lack of people being in charge of the batteries

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

1 Mechanical Mentor
1 Electrical Mentor
Sometimes 1 Software Mentor (if we're trying to work through some code bug)

1 Safety Captain (Mechanical Lead Student)
2 Mechanical Students
1 Electrical Lead Student
1 Software Lead Student

7 Total People

Drive Team does not hang out in the pit. No reason for us to be there getting in the way. We are either debriefing the past match, interfacing with our scouting team for the next match, talking strategy with other teams, watching matches in the stands, eating food, or hanging out by the practice field.