Our team has increase in size drastically over the past few years and as our teams increased we’re trying to create more positions as far as competitions goes. I’m trying to make a list of roles on the team that are important. Everyone has Driver, Human Player, etc but was just curious to want other team’s rosters look like as far as positions go during competition.
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We have the regular drive team, but we also include a safety captain, Pit Crew (keep the pit ready for robot and answer judges), and a media person taking photos. We also have a whole scouting group led by a Lead Scout who makes general notes and compiles the pick list.
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seeing as we still are a relatively small team( 15 members), we make sure that a majority of our team is scouting matches with drive team being a part of the pit crew.
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Pit captain - someone in charge of who is allowed in the pit and leading repairs on the robot
Battery man - makes sure batteries are getting charged and that there is a fresh one before every match
Scouting captain - in charge of organizing pit and stands scouting
Next year we are going to have someone in charge of taking videos and photos
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My team is a smaller team (Around 30 Members) So most of us pick up multiple jobs. We have normal drive team, multiple photographers, a 3-4 person pit crew with a mentor, two programmers and a mentor, one person to monitor batteries and greet scouts, then the rest of us scout and return to the team to build friendships and collect buttons.
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+1 on Battery Czar
If you have enough people to make this a dedicated role at competitions, you should do it!
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A couple years ago we started doing a shift schedule for competitions, primarily to improve morale by giving scouts at least one shift of doing something besides scouting. The roles we assign are:
- Drive team (same 5 people the whole comp)
- Pit crew (1-3 people at a time for software & the same for mechanical, almost all of the team gets to rotate in for at least one shift)
- Safety captain (1 person, may rotate out at some point if they need a break)
- Media (2-3 people take turns, one person per shift)
- Scouting (minimum 6 people per shift, ideally 8 or 9 so people can take bathroom breaks and such and still have all the teams scouted, sometimes up to 12 or 14 if we have a lot of kids)
- Business rep in the pit to talk to judges & passersby (1 person per shift, would like to have 2-3 people rotate through if we had enough people who were knowledgable)
- Chairman’s team (only for Chairman’s presentation)
- FIRST Ambassador (one person, on-call role talking to/giving tours to VIPs)
- Strategy lead (one person for the whole comp)
We do three shifts the first two days (morning, lunch -3pm, 3-EOD) and two on the final day (AM and PM).
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My daughter thanks you for the gender neutral term…
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Very similar here, but we divide scouting into pit scouting (“qualitative”) and match scouting (“quantitative”). We make up a schedule (I’ve cut the student’s names off of this image).
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Do y’all have designated people for playoffs for positions like the pit crew?
This is what our team uses as well. The more people, the more scouts you can have and the less time each person has to scout.
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We have a similar type of schedule
We have one permanent drive team for all stages of the competition like most other teams do. Our pit crew is a little more complex:
We have an “A” team, which is comprised of the most experienced veteran students. The A team will step in when something major goes wrong during a match (e.g. a gearbox failing, mechanism breaking, etc.).
We then have our regular pit crew, which is usually comprised of some newer students. These students are generally responsible for routine maintenance (e.g. making sure ropes are tensioned, mechanisms are homed before the next match, etc.). Having this team in the pits is the ideal scenario.
We have one dedicated battery manager who keeps track of each battery and what match it was used in. We found that having one person dedicated to this was the best option.
As for other roles, we have about 10 scouts (who rotate) and a scouting mentor in the stands, a safety captain, a media team, and a dedicated award team. We also have a strategy lead who relays important information to the drive coach before and after matches.
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We do. Other team members are welcome to come down to the pits to either observer other teams’ pits or our own pit, but if it gets too crowded in our pit and stuff needs to get done they know that they will be sent back to the stands and that it’s no reflection on them, it’s just the pits are small and you can only fit a very limited number of people there if you’re trying to get something done.
[Edit] If you were asking do we vary personnel during different phases of a competition – generally we don’t. The exception is off-season events (like our fav, “Cow Town Throw Down”) where we give people a chance to experience new roles in a competition setting.
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Off the top of my head:
- Pit Boss (1): Responsible for pit priorities and checklists (sometimes an adult, sometimes a student, and why not both!)
- Pit Crew (4+), on a rotating shift system
- Mechanical (2+): Reponsible for mechanical systems
- Electrical (1-2): Responsible for electrical and pneumatic systems (idk why pneumatics fell to electronics)
- Programming (1-2): Reponsible for software fixes and updates
- Drive Coach/Drivers/HP/Technician (5) - Responsible for on-field operations: When not in a match they are preparing for the next match with strategy, debriefing the last match with pit, working with the pit on the practice field or watching matches
- Strategist (1-2) - Responsible for match strategy coordination before match and briefing drive team
- Head Scout (1-2) - Responsible for database and scout management
- Scouts (6+), on a rotating shift system - Responsible for gathering data
- Presentation Team (part time to full time, depending on size) (3) - Responsible for Chairman’s presentation + Pit Informational Displays/Handouts
- Media Team (1+) - Responsible for documenting team + matches (photos and video) and team social media
- Help Other Teams Team (?+) - Responsible for assisting other teams with mechanical and software tasks, busiest on practice day but also makes sure teams have things like basic autos. Was a larger role in the era of cheesecake & is very much “extra credit” after other needs have been filled.
On 1296 the different subgroups were their own thing for the most part, with some attempts to rotate younger members between scouting and pit to build up their skills. Helping Other Teams is not a role that you can give to unskilled students and 1296 was able to enable this role by having enough mentors to guide younger students/very skilled older students.
On 253, students rotate between pit/scout/break shifts on a much greater scale with a handful of older students maintaining pit positions to keep sanity.
Also @Allison_K has one of the most systemic approaches to running a robotics team that I’ve seen and probably has cool systems to learn about.
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We have a fair number of positions for a team our size, but sometimes (since we’re a relatively small team) these get doubled up in one person.
- Drive team is the standard five positions (Driver, Operator, Coach, Human Player, and Technician) which does not change at a particular competition.
- Safety Captain, whose role is obvious.
- Lead Mechanical, who acts as the pit boss.
- Lead Programmer, who usually is also the Technician on the Drive team.
- Lead Electrical, who is in charge of batteries.
The three leads all also take charge of any repairs in their sub-team’s area. - Strategist, who may or may not be one of the Drive team members but is always a senior student who has experience with multiple competitions.
- Lead Scout, who runs and coordinates the scouting sub-team and coordinates with the Strategist (assuming they’re not also the Strategist themselves.)
These last two positions also work outreach to other teams during events. Our just graduated Lead Scout (Sid) was incredibly good at this part of the job (and a mighty fine scout too.) Their replacement is going to have big shoes to fill.
Any other mission is generally handled by the team Captain or Vice Captain as the spokespeople of the team. Other team members (generally freshmen and sophomores) work under these leaders pretty flexibly as needed.
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