Traits of the Drivers, Coaches, and Human Players

[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.