Choosing Drivers

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally Posted by H0WSY0URCAT

About the racing games to find the best driver......I am the worst at racing games and i was told by some of my mentors and other team's mentors that i am one of the best drivers they have seen. I think it all comes down to hand eye coordination and dexterity and also if they do well under pressure.

That is an interesting comment. I am one who disagrees with some people on my team who think being good at games makes you good at robot driving. It sounds like you confirm my thoughts. It would be possible to make a game that simulates driving our robots, but the regular games do not. Our robots all have their handling characteristics which are a lot different from what most games would do with the same control inputs. Maybe I also discount the relevance of games because I am relatively good at driving robots (for someone about 45 years too old to be FIRST-eligible), though I have very VERY little experience with video games. I figure maybe the R/C airplane flying and R/C car racing helped in my case, but who knows.

Anyway, the bottom line, as many have stated, is that knowledge of the rules, knack for game strategy, ability to take pressure, and having the right attitude are at least as important in making a good driver as having good "stick skills," though the stick skills are very important.

A last comment... We select our drivers "starting from scratch" every year. Sometimes a returning drive team member will keep the job, and sometimes not, but every team member who meets our general requirements to travel to the competitions is given the chance to try out for drive team positions if they want to.