Drive Practice

[angelah]

We build a practice bot and have a half field in our shop. There's a smooth transition from build to driving practice. At first, drive practice requires stopping and starting multiple times to fix, adjust, and change things. It's helpful to have more than just the drivers during those times. Eventually we get to the point where we are competition ready and it's good to have time with just the drive team and a few students to assist (battery changes, field re-set, etc.)

We are small enough that our drivers are still students who built and programmed a large part of the robot, so I think it would be different for teams with specialized drivers. You might want programmers, etc. on hand during much of driving practice.