Traits of the Drivers, Coaches, and Human Players

[SoccerNerd36]

Im a member of a rookie team and i was wondering how you choose your drivers. Also, is there anything you do to prepare your drivers for the games and if so what?

[Peter Matteson]

We gave the kids a written exam on the rules, robot, competition, and strategy. After that we did a driving skills competition with old robots to further narrow down to 4 students. They will practice head to head to be the competition drive team. This is different than we have done for the last two years and I don't know how it will work out yet. It is a way you could look at doing your selection but sub it RC cars for old robots in the practice. Also a lot of what the drivers really do at the competition you won't fully understand until you get there but quizzing the kids on those things tells us a lot fast.

[Mike33]

Originally Posted by SoccerNerd36

Im a member of a rookie team and i was wondering how you choose your drivers. Also, is there anything you do to prepare your drivers for the games and if so what?

all i gotta say is get some practice and have the drivers discribe what they whould do in a 'what if' scenario.

P.s.-Search before u post-

[Tytus Gerrish]

Practice, Practice, Practice. if a driver doesn't have it they won't preform well. I've seen it every year a team that had an awesome robot that they spent all but 1 hour before ship to finish their robot have a driver with no practice drive every match and the whole time they're trying to figure out how to make it go the way they want it to.

The Driver's only job is to make the robot go from point a to point b. trust me, I know thats reley all it is, obstacle courses being used to test drivers to pick one in my opinion not the best idea. giving them commands on where to make the robot go is probably a better way.

the operators only job is to make whatever is attached to the robot do what it's supposed to do

The Coach's job is to tell the driver where Point B is. and to tell the operator what to do with those appendages.

[Kit Gerhart]

I don't have much to add to what's already been said, except for this: Don't rule out first year students if they demonstrate the skills and can take the pressure. I say this from experience.

In 1998, when I was with TechnoKats, we had kids from grades 8-12 on our team. Our robot was very versatile and capable, but our three-axis arm with a ball gripper was very skill-intensive to operate well. Our robot was completed in time to use for our driver and operator testing, and we tested our candidates mainly in "timed scoring" tests in which balls were scored as in a match. We did something that I probably wouldn't recommend, (though it worked well for us that year) which was to have an adult, me, drive the robot to test the arm operator candidates, and have another adult, Jeff Burch, operate the arm to test the drivers. In the end, an 8th. grader won our arm operator test, and a senior won the base driver test. That 8th. grader had amazing skills at operating the arm, and he certainly wasn't bothered by the 10,000 screaming people during the final matches as we won the Championship that year, the last year before alliances. My point in all this is, don't rule out first year and/or young students if they have the skills, attitude, and rules knowledge to run your robot.