Hey, I’m just wondering how teams structured their drive practice this year, and how much time drivers had for practice. Our team has been getting better with giving the drivers enough time to get used to the controls, but I just wanted to see what other teams were doing. Do you have a certain amount of time reserved for practice? Do you find ways to practice even before the season starts? Is there time for the drivers to provide feedback on the controls?
2 Likes
We have had the same driver for the past three years with the same drive train so he already had a good feel for the controls and robot feedback. We got a few hours before our first event and maybe 8 hours between our first and second event. The driver and I both have provide feedback on the controls as we practice. We discuss button changes and joystick feedback and make modifications accordingly. There isn’t necessarily a certain amount of time reserved for practice. We discuss priority of all the tasks which need to take place. We usually don’t practice before the season starts but many students get time behind the glass during off-season events.
This was my second year driving (Detroit will be my 10th event). We didn’t have the resources to be able to build our own field except one side of a rocket. We set up chairs in the general area that things would be. One thing we mainly focused on was simple maneuverability. Going from the “playerstation” and turning around and racing the rocket. Basically just getting down those movements. I found that most helpful. we used our practice bot inbetween events to practice as well
In season, 30-60 minutes with last years bot as often as possible (we usually got 1-2 times a week)
between competitions (with the practice bot) we tried to run every night, setting aside time for software tuning and repairing inevitable breakages.
In all, we would probably run the equivalent of 2 or 3 event’s worth of gameplay during our weekly practice.
For resources, we have a second robot, we have last years robot the practice with defense, and our lab space offers about 1/3 of a field, so we had a wooden rocket and 1/2 of the cargo ship built for training.
We basically did 2h or so of drive practice before comp (Maybe even less than that)
But at MVR, we were at the practice field as much as possible including walk-on slots.
(which led us to almost miss qualifying match 65, but we made it) 
We had about 4 hours of drive practice before our first event, and probably 4 more between our second and last. We have a “mock” quarter field. I don’t have many pictures from this year, but will include some from last year in case others want to see a “lower” budget practice field.
My team uses our unbag time too and whatever time we can during the last week of build season.
We don’t have a set amount of time for practice, but we try to give as much time as possible. Which will be critical this year since our drive team is graduating this year.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.