Traits of the Drivers, Coaches, and Human Players

[tribotec_ca88]

Originally Posted by hacksaw692

The first year I tried out for driving, our teacher made us drive the robot around an obstical course while the rest of the team cheered and yelled as loudly as they could to try and throw off our concentration (....) I think it was most definitly a good way of picking drivers and controlers.

That's actually an interesting method!!!...we usually keep quiet while students tryout - unless someone crashes or hits an obstacle...then everyone bursts out in laughter (well, a few of us panicked... )...

[Projectchon]

the guy who is driving and the guy who is "the Arm" should be grest friends, so they know what the other one wants to do.

[Steve P]

The best trait is that only one person calls the shots. Wether its the driver, arm operator, or coach, it doesnt matter. One of you calls the shots during the match and dictates what happens.

[Josh Fritsch]

This is my first year as a mentor for my team, Team Rush 27. I was the driver/operator for our team throughout my four years of high school. Now as a mentor I was given the job of finding and preparing this years drivers for what they are going to experience out on the field. Through my experience, this is what I look for in choosing new drivers as well as the process on how to train them.

First of all, any operator of the robot has to be confident with him/herself. They must not be intimidated easily must know that the rest of their team is going to be looking up to them to make the robot perform while on the field. Even though the team may not be pressuring the drivers to perform to perfection, the drivers themselves will feel that they are, and must be able to handle the pressure. They must also be focused and be able to stay calm as well as still complete the tasks that must be done with distractions. On the field it is loud and can be very distracting at some times, they must learn to stay calm and focus on the job at hand. A major part of being a driver is to be able to communicate well, to be able to communicate to you fellow driver, your coach, human player, as well as the other teams is possibly the most critical component.

When choosing drivers for this season I am planning to go about the following plan:
First, I like to set up an obstacle course. Using past robots, OCCRA or FIRST, I have the students drive through a series of times to get a feel for the controls in their hands. They must "become one with the robot" I guess you could say. Each person has their own individual feel for the robot and they must be given time to find this out for themselves. I would have them driver through a series of obstacle courses each meeting, each getting a little tougher and having them go a little faster. At the end of the obstacle course I make them complete it again, except this time they must drive the robot in reverse. **This is a major advantage out on the field, to be able to drive backward, forward, side-to-side and not losing their sense of which joystick to move for it to go in a certain direction** As a coach or mentor, you have to provide the students with support, don't be condescending, think of ways to improve and explain them in a non accusing way. Build trust with your drivers. However the drivers need to understand that you are the coach, and they must respect you judgment while on the field. Oh and another very important thing... If the student makes a mistake on the field, do not tolerate any other students criticizing them after the match. As a coach's responsibility you must step up and say that you told the drivers what was supposed to be done and they should take any issues to you and not the drivers themselves! Make your students on the team aware that the drivers know if they made a mistake or not, they to not have to be told another 20 times by each student on the team. Our team has a special ritual if you would, that we do after every match. The coaches should be the only people talking to the drivers about their performance and how to improve. We have the team come down to the pits and welcome the drivers and coach no matter what the outcome of the game,the support that they get from the team will only make them better.

After they are getting used to the robot, another exercise is to have the entire team come and watch them practice. This will put an enormous amount of pressure on them in front of the team as well as provide distractions. They must be able to do this, because it will be 10x harder once they have to do it for real in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people at nationals.

If you have a practice field at your disposal, then as soon as you have a moving robot, drive on the field as much as you can practice certain procedures/maneuvers you know you will want to accomplish during a competition over and over again, making it quicker and quicker and until they can do it flawlessly.

Thats all I can think of at the moment, if you have any other questions you can pm me or answer to this post. Other than that, just PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE...three key words to success. Good luck!!!

Crap, I forgot to add one thing. I found this out the the past couple years and I believe that it is a very good idea for any team. If you know who your drivers are going to be...make sure that they are on that sub-team...i.e the chassis driver is on the chassis team and the arm driver is on the arm team. I found that this helps immensely, if the student knows the inner workings of the part of the robot that they are controlling they know a lot about the robot before they even touch the controls!

Originally Posted by Bleric

To tell the truth, the best way to choose your drivers is to have them practice and see which one is best. Good drivers can come from any team, really

Theres so much more then that.

Raw skill is just a fraction of what a driver needs to have. Good hand/eye coordination is another skill that is a must. Also the driver and operator need to be able to communicate well with each other and the coach. You dont want to risk breaking your arm because the driver had to make a quick move and the operator wasnt aware, so he left the arm down to get whacked causing an unecessary repair to be made.

Also, anyone on the driveteam needs to know the rules of the game inside and out. I reccomend giving each of them a game test and not being happy with the results until they are pretty much perfect.

Finally, the drivers and coaches all need to be able to handle criticism. Back in the days when I was with the Technokats, we would have a debriefing after every match where the coach would point out the positive and negitive things that happened in the match, and then after that was done the drive team would get a chance to critique the coach. You really dont want anyone on your drive team to get offended by every single comment made....theres going to be ciriticism, so you just have to deal with it and make improvements down the line to prevent them from happening again.

Ok, I lied....one last thing

Remember, driving around in the shop with your team watching is a lot different then having a few thousand people watching your every move and (possibly up to 10,000 people watching you) The have to be able to handle the pressure.

[RoboMom]

Always have a back-up plan. Sometimes the interviews for Chairman's are held at the same time as you are on the field.

[EricH]

We usually try three or four different combos during Thursday's matches, then choose a primary team and backup team. The drive team is always students who have at least one year's experience, but the human player can be anyone. We just try to choose the best for the job. I realize that the driver experience requirement will be hard for rookies, but there are lots of ways to choose.

[Josh Hambright]

For driver, it is crucial to have a working knowledge of how the robot works, and be able to make minor repairs in a hurry while staging the matches, communication skills are also a must to be able to communicate with team members (like programmers and mechanical people to explain problems) and your alliances. They also must understand the game very well and be able to make split second decisions on strategy. Driving skills are of course a crucial part of the mix, i think having some sort of tryout is a good way to do it. I've seen Public Relations kids who could drive the robot way better then technical kids so dont limit it to the people who built it.

For coaches, they must understand the strategy of the game, they must know every rule inside and out, they must understand the scoring, they must have good scouting skills and know the competition as well as the alliances, and they must be able to communicate to the drivers while still keeping their cool under extreme preasure.

For human play, it is important to have alot of the same skills as the coach, as they are yet another set of eyes that can help out in monitoring whats going on during a match. They also must be able to effectively complete the task at hand for human players.

Above all else the ability to change your plans when needed and be able to handle the preasure is important for all the positions. Also being able to think quickly is a must, each 2 minutes of a match is the shortest 2 minutes of your life, its amazing how fast it is over when you are down there on the field in the heat of play.

[JD_280_DRIVER]

Hey,

I am a driver for 280. Every year we do a drivers trial. We test each of the rookies skills on the previous robot. So as a rookie team this could be a good idea for youb to try.


Jd

[dubious elise]

you all have had excellent points so far, but i'd like to add just one more. make sure that your drivers know the robot inside and out. by this, i mean that they should know all of the limitations of, say, gearboxes, motors, electrical equipment, arms, and pneumatics systems. this knowledge will enable them to keep the robot running in optimal condition much longer than normal. it also comes in handy when something occurs on the field that causes damage to the robot; the drivers have the best view of the field of anyone on your team, so they can speed up pit repairs by helping to pinpoint the damage.

[Polishlber]

Take a look at Team 365's (MOE) MOEmentum, FYI.

There's a spreadsheet link in the week 3 edition that outlines the key competition criteria that the MOE team uses when selecting a comp team.

http://www.moe365.org/moementum.php

[Ali Ahmed]

Originally Posted by dubious elise

you all have had excellent points so far, but i'd like to add just one more. make sure that your drivers know the robot inside and out. by this, i mean that they should know all of the limitations of, say, gearboxes, motors, electrical equipment, arms, and pneumatics systems. this knowledge will enable them to keep the robot running in optimal condition much longer than normal. it also comes in handy when something occurs on the field that causes damage to the robot; the drivers have the best view of the field of anyone on your team, so they can speed up pit repairs by helping to pinpoint the damage.

I agree completely with this. I can not say how many times it has been crucial to know the limitations of the robot to know what you can and can not do. And because you know what it can do you can also know what is wrong if something breaks.

[Michael Corsetto]

Team 114 does have tryouts for the driver position, but seniors usually get priority. They are the ones who have been with the team the longest and have (usually) the most maturity. The way we see it, Juniors and down have at least another year so we should let the seniors shine. We also usually have a programmer in the group, be it coach or arm control, so they can check out how the autonomous mode is.

As for the human player, you should just pick by skill. I was the human player last year because I was the only guy that could shoot reasonably. This year you should look for a human player that is quick, sharp and won't let the pressure make him jump to early or misplace the tetra.

This year especially, the coach should be a good listener, but able to speak out when it is the right time. Maturity would help too

[Sakura141]

We usually have one of our mentors, Raging Al, Come up with a drive team test that we have lovingly named, "The drive team test of doom."

The highest scores go for student coaches, next highest Driver, next the button monkey, and then human player.

Then we have a hands-on test in which we drive the robot through and obstacle course in makeshift drive teams to see how well the people work together.

[jagman2882]

Key charactaristics in a driver are concentration and "ice in your veins" thats what u gotta have. as well as a strong understanding of the rules