Driving Practice

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Originally Posted by lark95

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.

The best drive train to practice on, in my opinion, is whatever your team uses the most, it would not make sense for my team to practice on a mecanum because we never build them, we always build some form of skid steer (arcade) drive.

As far as the best things to practice, it depends on what you are already good at, but the most important thing that we look for in a driver is smoothness, especially under time pressure. Ideally in a match the robot never stops moving unless it is shooting or loading and those should be very brief stops. I have told many people trying out for driver to slow down, don't try to go all out right away. A good way to practice this is to drive at demonstrations, especially ones with small children, you are concerned about hitting them, so you wind up practicing slow movements.

Demonstrations are really good places for an experienced driver to practice (as long as you are controlled enough not to hit anyone) because people often don't think anything about walking between you and the robot, the robot can get pretty far away from you, there are lots of distractions, and you are expected to make calculated, controlled movements. These are all things that a good driver on the field must be capable of handling. That being said, I always advocate safety FIRST. If you are not ready to drive a robot around people, DON'T! And always use bumpers in demonstrations.

Practice matches are really good for learning how to use your robot in competition however I don't find them as useful for just general driver practice. General driver practice usually takes the form of an obstacle course with consequences for major deviations off course or collisions ie lose a turn (or as previously mentioned, pushups). This helps to encourage precise and deliberate driving, both of which are far more important than fast driving.