My team’s been using Xbox one controllers to drive our robot the past few years. We haven’t really had any problems with them, but we do have some Logitech flight sticks sitting around. Will using them instead be better or worse, in terms of precision control? As in, would you be able to rotate/make more precise adjustments with the bigger axis? Also, in a general sense, which of the two options are better and why?
This really will come down to driver preference. If you have both controllers sitting around it should be pretty easy for your programmers and drivers to try each and decide which is the best for them.
I personally think flight sticks allow you to be more precise but there are tons of very high performing teams that are super successful with xbox controllers or something like a Gamesir G7 (hall effect sensors for lower dead zones).
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I encourage teams to think of drive team control as part of the whole-season design and engineering challenge, rather than something which is simply a “preference” or a fait accompli. There are a lot of criteria:
- Some games have poor sightlines, requiring the drive team to move around a lot: in these cases, a handheld control is strongly preferred, no matter the other criteria.
- Drive team effectiveness as a function of training time is not a straight line, no matter what control method is used. Often there’s a choice between “can be pretty good initially but never gets great” and “hard to learn but can get really good with time”.
- Since robot time is limited, there’s always a tradeoff between “making the driver better (with a primitive control)” and “making the driver-assist software better (but the driver needs to learn it)”.
I’d encourage you to be purposeful about these tradeoffs. FRC history is rich with variety in drive team control, ranging from profoundly awesome (wearable position controller for an arm) to profoundly silly (the whole “guitar hero” era).
That said, in terms of simple biomechanics and sensing, I think a good way to think about it is in terms of dexterity: the driver wants to be able to make both large and small movements, and those small movements should be faithfully rendered as drivetrain velocity. The highest-dexterity task that almost everyone is already an expert in is writing, and even-higher dexterity expert tasks, like painting or surgery, use the same mechanics: something like holding a pen (or brush or scalpel). So if I were worried about biomechanics (and I’m not saying this should be your first worry), I’d look for control hardware that simulates the hold-a-pen scenario. For that, I think the best option is medium-sized “RC” style controllers, like the Spectrum Interlink DX. This hardware has significant disadvantages, like a dearth of buttons, but it could be modified pretty easily.
Hope that helps!
My team (1661) uses a flight stick for swerve and xbox controller for intake + climb + that type of stuff. I drive the swerve w/ the flight stick and I think it’s really good. Xbox controllers are good because there are so many buttons that you can press easier which you can’t really do with a flight stick. I love using the flight stick for drive though because I can spin the robot while moving it forward really smoothly and precisely.
I’m a big fan of fpv drone controllers for controlling swerve drive. I was the driver last year and used a TBS Mambo which worked great! I would highly recommend if you want more control over your driving. There are also buttons on the controller that are configurable.