I have two years of driver experience 7 events attended and drove at champs twice, but I think that my skills are not the best, any tips?
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The obvious solution is practice. During build season you could try coming in on days the robot isn’t being worked on and drive it in it’s current state. Whenever you can practice with a full bot that is best, but even a drivebase alone can be great practice. If you don’t have any sort of bot, practice is much less rewarding; you could try xrc (even though it’s not super realistic) or even a racing game to work on reaction times.
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How do you gauge your performance and skill level? Different drivers and of course games will have different driving styles, so you could be looking at that or how your robot scores.
It sounds like you have had a lot of drive time, have you used different styles of drivetrains, had the opportunity to work with programmers to change joystick input mapping to your liking, etc?
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practice! i would guess that championship drivers have tens of hours of practice time each season.
but i would also suggest that you could play an active role in making the system what you want. involve the hardware and software teams in practice sessions; built custom controllers, and tune the system as a whole.
examples:
- i’ve found RC-style joysticks much better than the either xbox-style (tiny) or thrustmaster-style (big) sticks.
- i’ve also found a bit of cubic mapping to be helpful to reduce sensitivity for low speed control.
- the default joystick deadbands imposed by windows can also be annoying for low-speed control.
- it’s helpful to have control features like “snaps” (go to a specific rotation and stay there)
- another useful feature: “jinks” (move hard to the side to avoid a defender)
a great robotics program shouldn’t rely on a virtuoso driver to tame a beast of a robot, think of it as a holistic program, and being easy to drive is one of the success factors.
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I would try to think of it like any sport. I remember play soccer, we didn’t scrimmage all day. You do drills in addition to improving your deficits. I would watch some video to find your main points of growth and develop some drills to benefits those aspects of your game.
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I imagine you will receive great advice regarding skill-building with the robot so I will go a different route and focus on the system.
Every team has varied resources (time, practice bot(s), access to workshop, etc) so we went in a different direction this year. We focused on a system that best utilized the resources we had. Disclaimer: I have no idea if any of this was valuable but it instilled confidence in our drive team and I am a big proponent of fake it till you make it.
-Communication: We spent a lot of time creating protocols on how to communicate with each other. Both technically and interpersonal. You have to speak the same language (i.e field placement/location shorthand) and also know how to speak to each other to get the best results. Some drivers/operators need to be constantly hyped while others need as close to silence as possible to remain focused during a match. Prepping mentally was crucial
-Muscle memory - This is mostly for operators but we spent a lot of time calling out set points or other commands for the operator to input with the controller in hand. This worked best when we didn’t have access to the robot but wanted to stay fresh. You could take it to the next level and add a key logger to monitor. Then, treat it like a test but that is probably overkill. One step further could be to watch a match and mirror each command as if you were actually competing.
-Games: There are a lot of games out there that focus on communication (i.e “Overcooked”, shout-out @UnofficialForth ) that are great for creating a bond between drive team members. Kind of a throwback to my first point but a drive team needs to be on the same page and communication is the first step in that.
-Film Review: Review your own, review elite teams or even not-so-elite teams. You will pick up things to do and things not to do pretty quickly. FUNalysis does a great job of this.
-READ THE MANUAL: Know what you can and can’t do. Sniping cubes was a big part of the game when human players made mistakes but you had to know where you can and can’t extend past the frame. It was perfectly acceptable to “drive” a game piece out of the opponent LZ as long as you didn’t draw contact from an opponent or extend outside of frame perimeter.
-Controls: This probably goes without saying but have a good working relationship with your programmers. You may disagree on what button layout should by but, in the end, you are the one operating. You have the final say. Just say it nicely lol. This goes for driver assistance, too. Programmers love shiny things that may not always be desired by the drive team. Communicate your wants early on and stay open-minded to improvements without taking them personally.
A lot of this is niche and maybe team specific but I hope something resonates with you.
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Watch match videos, like a lot of them. Like hundreds and hundreds if possible. Especially if practice time is not possible or limited for whatever reason. Once you are in control of the robot at max speed, the most important driver skill is strategy. Both entire match strategy and driving strategy.
Match videos will show you a huge variety of situations you can be in, and how to or not to respond to any given situation. The big thing to look for is how teams respond to unusual situations, especially congestion and defense. As you watch more videos, you get more familiar with how interactions on the field plays out and how best to avoid or force them in your own favor. In my own experience, watching match videos taught me how to handle defense extremely well despite having zero prior experience with swerve and only having a few hours of practice time before my first event on swerve.
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If you’re open to critiques and suggestions, post a video of one of your matches you feel was your best and then one you feel was your worst.
Is your coach a former driver?
There is no substitute for practice.
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Yeah so I usually don’t get the robot until like a week 0, I did tank drive using thrust master for all of 2022 and swerve drive this year Using a ps4 controller.
My drive team will need a lot of work next year(all of my drive team is either leaving or graduating 
) I have experience with both defense and offense.
I do play games that requires a lot of attention and reaction time. And I do driver debrief with my drive team after every match.
And this is a double edged sword I am a fearless driver that can do crazy stuff (going airborn, driving off the charge station from its side) definitely did not disable our robot a few time lol. I have also driven with bad batter ties before, match here
As a freshman I have a lot more room to improve. And get better
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I think one of my best matchesis this one
One of my matches in champs, our arm broke so we can’t score and I started playing defense, got one foul but is been a year since I played defense
Btw all my drive team except for me was never on some sort of role on the drive team
Also every time after we score or pick up I always tell my co driver to center the arm before some thing horrible happens
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With your bot specifically year to year, get an accurate simulator, slip, friction, etc pop the rendering into Unity or Advantage Scope or another 3d framework to view it, use field CAD from first and pop the camera at the driver station and simulate some fake cameras and just practice again and again, not as good as having the real bot but much better than nothing while you wait for it to be finished or while things are being tested
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Being an aggressive driver isn’t inherently a bad thing, in fact, it is often a good thing as being afraid to use the full potential of a robot is a very common problem. However, the very important thing is learn to learn to be in control. Blah blah agreesive uncontrolled driver bad, I’m not going to continue beating on a dead horse. You shouldn’t feel like you are fighting to control the robot, it should feel like its a natural extension of you. In my experience, the hardest mechanical skill in driving is controlling the rotation of the swerve because you need to be able to accurately control it at both high and low rotation speeds, yet swerve spins so fast. Driving in constrained spacesy without hitting things, especially with speed is an important skill.
Once you have control of the robot, you already aren’t afraid of using the entire robot the doors are wide open to any and all strategies. Unusual offensive, defense, opportunistic defense, various ways of avoiding defense all become effective options when you are both aggressive and controlled.
Another huge affect on driving is actually robot design. Excessively floppy or frail parts, narrow intakes, or other forms of unreliability tend to put fear into drivers and as a result, they tend to not drive very well. Well designed robots that are stiff even under impact with good intakes and automation don’t create such fear which is significantly helpful. When you aren’t afraid and trying to avoid breaking things, you can put much more focus on driving strategy and driving with purpose.
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Just watching your match here, a few words of advice (unasked for but here it is anyway)
-Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, when in your community and loading zone, you sprint over from the midfield then struggle to line up. You’d be faster if you came in slow and got your line ups first try.
-Work with your human player. As a driver, its hard to see on the other side of the field, which makes intaking pieces harder. Make your intake action repeatable, line up with a wall and have the HP aim it for you while you just move foreword instead of aiming.
-When scoring in the community, line up flush with the hybrid nodes then translate laterally rather than trying to score at an angle. Makes driving much more consistent.
Best of luck and good driving comes with lots of practice. At the end of the day don’t be too hard on yourself, just always give it your best.
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My mentors tell me that
Yeah so my drive coach during a match communicates with the human player and I focus on driving, definitely agree with going flush with the nodes
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Finished robot is definitely ideal, I don’t think our programmers or anyone on the team are skilled enough to make a simulation of robot on field. Especially when two of our senior programmers are leaving this year
As others have stated, practice first and foremost. The more time you can get on the robot the better. That said, I can also share some anecdotal suggestions:
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If you’re into video games, I’d suggest spending time on some that use comparable controls to your robot. Back in the day I spent a LOT of time in Flight Simulator games which I attribute to my success as a driver years ago due to the similarity in control schemes. That said, we used a lot more joysticks and tank drives back in those days, so your mileage with flight sims may vary these days.
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Speaking of Joysticks, my second piece of advice is avoid cheap controllers. Both cheaper Logitech and standard Xbox controllers are prone to significant inconsistencies between controllers/joysticks, often aren’t particularly durable, and tend to have large dead-zones (or, even worse, dead zones that aren’t large enough, causing control drift even when you’re not touching the controller). For Joysticks, I would recommend CH Products Flight Sticks which are by far the highest quality joysticks I’ve found on the market (even though they don’t have much in the way of aesthetics). For controllers, I would suggest the Xbox Elite series controllers as they generally use higher quality components and sensors. There may also be 3rd-party controllers that use hall-effect sensors you could try too (these are generally far more reliable/accurate). I have no experience with USB RC controllers but, as others have suggested, that might be something to try too (though you might have to modify the throttle-side joystick if you’re running a tank drive).
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Select your type of controller carefully. These days many teams opt for gamepads like the previously mentioned Xbox controllers, as many students are already familiar with them, but I wouldn’t write off joysticks completely. Joysticks tend to offer a great deal more control resolution than controllers (just by nature of their larger size) which can make finer motions much easier to perform without extra software assistance. Ultimately it comes down to driver preference and balancing familiarity vs control accuracy. Our teams last driver used joysticks, but he also had worked on his family farm so he was familiar with running machines with those kinds of controls, by comparison, our current driver uses Xbox controllers and is quite happy with them.
From my experience, the best practice I have is honestly with an empty drivetrain just running routes around cones all day. Like 5+ hours a week in the start of the season.
Understand how the robot moves around the field to the point that you don’t have to think about it anymore; the joysticks should be a part of you in a way that it becomes natural, like walking or riding a bike.
Also, if you have the ability, find someone to play defense. Even a few practice matches against an empty tank drive with ballast will work wonders in your ability to maneuver around other robots. Our team always has some sort of working drivetrain (past robots, kit bots, etc) just for this purpose, which also helps to train backup/new drivers.
100% agree with watching matches. Over the course of the season I watched every single elims match from every single competition on TBA. Take notes of what you like and don’t like from different teams.
Honestly, the biggest disconnect I’ve seen in drivers is going from “just running cycles” practice into an actual competition. There are infinitely more factors at a competition than at your practice field alone, and you won’t be prepared for comp by just picking up cones and placing them. Our mantra has always been that this is not practice, practice has to have some sort of tracking element. Timing routes, counting knocked over obstacles, etc. Your practice should have concrete metrics to actually tell you how to improve other than just “I need to be faster”.
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