Drive Team

[xXhunter47Xx]

When I was a student I was appointed 'gunner' while my ex-girlfriend was appointed 'driver.' It didn't go well, we were not an effective team.

Maybe this is why it's bad to have relationships with coworkers?

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

Maybe this is why it's bad to have relationships with coworkers?

Hehe, one must at least be cautious.

[K-Dawg157]

One the team I am a member of, 157, we actually have drive-team tryouts.

Once the robot is completed we have students who want to be a driver, operator or human player practice. We set up distractions and other robots and have them practice. The best driver is usually selected first, and then whoever is the best operator, that they work best with is the other half.

You should make sure they work together well, and that they will listen to the drive coach.

Last year, we had:
Driver: Build Student
Operator: CAD Student
Human Player: Build Student

The students tried out, the drive coach chose his best operator, and she told him who she worked best with, and they worked together to practice.

[rhinobot]

As a rookie team we are being very diverse in our drive team!
Driver: Mechanical Student
Operator: Lead student programmer
HP: Business/outreach student
Coach: Me, mechanical/strategy mentor

Our alternates have not been officially determined yet.

It's best to have a diverse drive team incase something happens to the robot and it needs a quick fix before the match!

**Also something that is often overlooked is. Make sure that there are 2 strong people on the drive team that are capable of lifting the robot onto the field!**

[Peyton Yeung]

Driver: Student lead and main CAD guy
Operator: electrical and mechanical guy
HP: Drive base CAD girl

[Sperkowsky]

Human player - general builder
Driver 1 (me) - electrical, designer, builder, and chairmans director, and webmaster

Driver 2/coach - programming lead, team president, builder.

[IronicDeadBird]

Driver 1. Drive Captain, Mechanical, CAD
Driver 2. Electrical, bit of mechanical
Driver 3. Programmer
And I should point out as the mentor most tied into drive practice.
I don't actually like driving robots that much nor am I good at it.

[Charlie2016]

Hi guys, quick question. Is it legal for us to have an eighth grade member on drive team? I have checked both the game and admin manual and cannot find any stipulations other than, "team member" when referring to drive team. Thanks in advance!

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Charlie2016

Hi guys, quick question. Is it legal for us to have an eighth grade member on drive team? I have checked both the game and admin manual and cannot find any stipulations other than, "team member" when referring to drive team. Thanks in advance!

The definition of DRIVER is "a pre-college student...".

[WeJohnFriedIt]

Here's the drive team for 1466:

driver 1 - senior team captain
driver 2 - junior mechanical team member
coach - senior team captain
human player - random freshman AKA noodle jesus

[Sparkyshires]

the one position that began as an informal tradition about five years ago and is now almost a formal requirement is that the programming lead is the secondary driver. The reasoning behind this is that my coach wants to also have a programmer behind the glass, so he/she knows whats going on in the code if something goes wrong, and what better position to put him/her on than at control of all the safeties and overrides they built into it? I know that it's saved our butts on at least two counts, if not more.

But aside from that the human player is our manufacturing lead, and our main driver is our design and engineering lead, and our coach is an alumni/mentor.

[StAxis]

Originally Posted by WeJohnFriedIt

Here's the drive team for 1466:

driver 1 - senior team captain
driver 2 - junior mechanical team member
coach - senior team captain
human player - random freshman AKA noodle jesus

For real though, that guy is noodle Jesus. Every time I saw him throw he made it. Absolutely absurd, heard the story behind his abilities and was very impressed.

[Michael 4499]

Our drive team consists of:

Build team co-captian
Both team co-captians
As well as a Programming member

We are all well versed on electronics as well.

[angelah]

I use a weighted table to choose positions on the team. Some of the considerations are time spent during build, time spent on the team in general, skill level, teamwork skills and initiative, and results of a rules/game test.

Our drive team is made up of the three students who put in (by far) the most time and effort on the team. They are also the build leader (driver), main programmer (operator), and Chairman's/business lead (human player.) The two drivers are the team captains. They have the most invested in the robot and the team and its performance; they also know the most about it.

[nighterfighter]

Since 2009, at least, 1771 has always had a programmer and a mechanical person as the drivers of the robot, but we have always done driver testing to determine who is most qualified. It just happened to have been a programmer and a mechanical student, every time.

Our drive coach is 90% is a mentor. The human player is usually whoever is best at it, but depending on the game, it could be rotated between 2 people. (For example, in Lunacy, we had a quarterback throw the balls for us...turns out he was better at throwing balls more accurately than any of us. )

A really good benefit of having both a programmer and mechanical as the drive team, is if something isn't working right, you can quickly determine if it is a hardware of software issue (It's probably hardware! ), or if you need to do some quick code changes before the match. And usually the programmers are very familiar with the control system, making sure everything syncs with the field, wires are correct, etc.

For the coach: While we have, like I said, used a mentor 90% of the time, that role is usually tested as well, and the drivers tend to have the final say. We have found that our students get too timid as a coach, however as a mentor, we aren't afraid to yell to get our point across to the driver... But like I said, the drivers tend to have the final say, because only the drivers know who is most effective for them.