Role of Team Captain

[EricH]

Originally Posted by thefro526

I'm a large supporter of the idea that Drivers should not be part of the Pit Crew, and shouldn't even have to worry about fixing the robot unless absolutely necessary.

The exception is eliminations. At that point, if the drivers don't know how to fix some of the robot, even the extra pit crew probably won't help...

As far as drivers and pit crew, drivers should at least know the easy stuff--thrown/broken chain, best guess at what's wrong with the control system this time, breaker/wire insertion, and what's likely to be the culprit when the whodijingle goes boing instead of sproing. Makes it easier on the pit crew to get a good idea of where to look for the problem while the drive team goes to strategize for their next match, plus if it's really major the drive team can do the easy stuff while everybody else puts the magic smoke back in.

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by EricH

The exception is eliminations. At that point, if the drivers don't know how to fix some of the robot, even the extra pit crew probably won't help...

This is a bit off the original topic, but seems to fit what we are discussing now.

I like to use the analogy that the driver is like a test pilot. It's the driver's job to drive, but it's also his job to report accurately what he experienced so that the problem can be found and fixed. If the only thing that the pit crew gets back from the drive team is that the robot didn't work, they won't be able to do much about it, whereas if the driver tells them that when he did x, the bot did y, and only when z was happening as well, then that's a lot easier to work with.

[Tarzan19]

The Team Captain, or "President" on our team, has generally been the driver of the robot, at least for the years that i have been involved.
There are a few reasons for this, and it's not because we gave it to them.
1. our team was so small, as to where, the driver needed to be as experienced with the robot as possible.
2. the President has spent the most amount of time with and around the robot.

as for the roles of our President, the main goal is to be the "Face" of the team. Just to basically represent the team at all times, which also includes running meetings, giving presentations to prospective sponsors, etc.

one thing i would like to note, is that we always have our lead programmer on the drive team, not just to run the drive station, but they also usually have the best understanding of how to fix it if there is a code error with the field or robot.