Driver Selection

[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 ^)

[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!

[Andrew Blair]

[QUOTE/]I think this issue can be resolved by being concious of what's happening in the game/having drivers who really know the robot and have worked on it. If you know what's happening...you'll know if you need/don't need to push your capabilities, and with a driveteam that spent considerable time building the robot they'll know the capabilities far better than anyone else. The people who have done the majority of work on it are far less likely to stupidly push the robot past where it should be.[/quote]



Our team holds pretty much the same idea. Those who spend the most time working on the bot know the most about it's capabilities, as well as weaknesses. And in the long run, if they decide they need to push the envelope, they're going to be the ones in the pits fixing the thing.

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