Driving Practice

[lark95]

Originally Posted by Knufire

95% of our driver practice consisted of this when I was a student:

1. Set the timer on the driver station to match timing
2. Enable the robot in practice mode
3. Drive if it were an actual match
4. Repeat 1-3.

Yes Yes and Yes again. This is the best way to practice. I was primary Driver for 3 years and i have to say that the year that i learned the most about driving was recycle rush. We had a completely manual robot with no auto stack at all. Every tote had to be stacked with 4 discrete commands and then the whole stack was carried on the from of our mecanum drive train making it very front heavy.

Me and my secondary driver probably did around 500 practice matches, i think we tried to do like 20 a night or something like that. By the end or the season in just felt like the robot was working by itself and we were just watching it. It was fun. I think a large part of this was repetition. This really help to develop muscle memory for things lie compensating for an out of balance robot, or not lining up for a high goal shot.

Personally i believe that the best robot to practice with is a mecanum drive-train. this is because how it drives is so very-able. if the floor is not level it will try to turn, if it is not balanced it will just be plain weird, however if you learn to position a mecanum drive train were you want it easily, then you can drive anything well.