Driver Selection

We play a game of "never", last person standing wins.

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by slickguy2007

When you guys pick drivers do you expect them to hold back in a match? Do you expect your drivers to protect the robot or to win at all costs(within reason)? What I am asking is do you pick someone who is aggressive or someone who protects the robot?


GO 1403!!!

Well, are you playing the game or playing with the robot? You know why some teams pick drivers based on the hours they put into the build season? Because they know the robot and its boundaries. Corey and I know our robot inside out, at least the parts we need to. For e.g. our arm last year, that thing was a complicated beast. After burning the speed controller once, I knew it was programmed to send full speed pulses to the victors and since the motors weren't moving(force holding it back), they burned out. Knowledge about the robot helps. It's also called Maturity. Why would you want to break your robot and then win a match? At the same time, you want drivers who are not totally afraid of trying new things. Search back on posts by Karthik and other great mentors in FIRST. They have said enough about driver selections.

What I described until now is the robot aspect. The other aspect the drivers need to understand is how to interpret rules and strategy. This years game especially involves a whole lot of strategy. You want drivers who know what they're doing, the penalties, the goals, the alliance picking system. They need to be good scouts on their own. You don't want drivers who play with the robot, you want drivers who play the game within the realms of gracious professionalism and of course without damaging(at least severely, but you need to give some work to your pit crew too) your robot. Let me tell you something - Winning competitions come with experience. You can have the best robot in FIRST and still lose every single match of a competition if you don't know how to play the game. It takes a while to get used to the controls, the field in general, the behavior of alliances and opponents.

To conclude, FIRST is a very involving project just like any other sport. Pick drivers who are smart, mature and particularly those who really exercise common sense.

Good luck,
-Bharat

[sdexp]

Our team, 1111, has made a decision on its drive team well in advance. Originally we developed a list of who wanted to drive on our team. This list was strikingly short, but we made use of those who enlisted themselves simply because of their apparent self-confidence.

At the robot scrimmages in the National Building Museum our new team members got a chance to try maneuvering the robot. Impressing our team mentors, they became part of the primary drive team for our debut at the Chesapeake Regional. The much more experienced drivers consist of a sophomore and a senior, who will be in charge of both driving and operating at different times at the regional.

We have made an early decision to have a student coach trained also. Unless all other coaches on our alliance are either both students or both mentors, our coach remains a student. We find this approach best following the spirit of FIRST and would benefit more as a team in doing such.

[bradleym1559]

Pretty much whoever was best at it. We finished our robot about a week and a half early so we had time to drive and narrow it down. We had driving tests too to see who could cap the most tetras in the 2 minutes, and a driving course to see who could navigate fastest.

[Ian Curtis]

For the second year in a row we managed to make the robot driveable in a final configuration 12 hours before we had to put it the crate. Thus we did not get much time to pick drivers. Judging from when we had it running around without the ability to pick up tetras our driver from last year will drive again and we will have a new operator. Actually no one wanted to drive becuase last years driver was really awesome and only two people wanted to operate. Which was much better than last year when everybody wanted to do drive and operate and we only had 4 or 5 practice matches!

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Our team uses a series of tests to determine who is going to be on the main drive team. There is also a back-up drive team. The tests are ability tests. Performance under pressure is also a major factor along with teamwork. I am, for the 4th year in a row, the back-up team driver.

[Shu Song]

Each driver must take a written test, which I took more seriously than the SAT's. The two guys who made up the test were so mean that they put in questions like which of the following is an incorrect example of inappropriate robot actions. I guess it's to make sure you have good logic skillz. AND the questions each had 5 choices, but there were up to 5 correct answers or none are correct. That test drove me nuts.

Then came the fun part, actual driving. We ran an obstical course completing various tasks like "knock that that pvc pipe on the ground" or "park it like a jeep in the end zone." Our performance was then evaulated and scored. The two pairs of drive and controller with the highest scores got the nod to control our baby this year.

[TheMuffinMan]

One of our goals is to make it to the next level, so our driver (I think it'll be myself and a friend on the team switching) we'll drive fairly reserved as to not tear the robot to shreads before Nat's. But if the game gets dirty.... well you just kinda have to take some chances

[Squeje250]

we have driver testing where we set up a obstical course and who ever hits the least amount of stuff ..... and or..... who ever has the fastest time gets it.....BUT you have to be a team player you cant be like arguing with everyone all the time.

(he he he.... DO YOU KNOW THE MUFFIN MAN ^)