Drive Train Controls

[Blevenson]

Like most driving controls, the real concern lies with the driver. Like you, we added fancy drive controls over the summer, however, when the drivers started using it they realized that the "fanciness" was taking them out of the moment. But, this is also very subjective as it varied between our two drive teams. With a new driver I would recommend starting with a really basic control scheme, like tank drive, and then talk with the driver to modify it to fit what they want. We ended up stripping down cheesy drive, because the negative inertia was annoying the drivers, so it is now a fairly simple two stick arcade scheme: one joystick is heading, and the other is throttle.

If you are interested in experimenting over the summer, try adding sensors to help the driver, like correcting heading deviations when attempting to drive straight.