We have been able to get all of our controls onto a single controller this season, which brought up an interesting question: What’s stopping us from having two human players? Rules wise there is nothing, so we are currently debating whether to actually do this at competition. This lets you put someone from your team on both the amp and the source. This would mean you have one less person behind the glass looking for stuff, but that could also end up as an advantage as you have less people saying different things. We are still undecided but thought it might be an interesting discussion.
There is also nothing saying that you can’t have 3 human players.
However, that would assume that either a) your robot is not functional enough to need a driver, or b) you have a fully-autonomous robot even in teleop such that you don’t need a driver.
I don’t have any rule to cite, but this rubs me the wrong way. I’m not seeing a clear role for a 4th human player so having one seems like it would mostly take away from what the other human players on your alliance get to do. If you do consolidate to one controller maybe consider having the human player serve as an alliance wide super coach coordinating between all the teams? That seems like it would offer more benefit.
The alliance may also need at least one Human Player to manage the Amp, but there’s nothing preventing them from having multiple people there either. Maybe one person manages the Notes coming out to make sure they don’t get jammed, one person watching the match flow to determine when to activate Amplification, and another trained to throw the High Notes? FIRST basically gives all teams 3 “Drive Team” buttons and leaves it up to the teams to determine how to use them. Maybe you have a complicated robot and need three people to control it with shisa kanko.
It seems more of a disadvantage to have only one driver than any advantage an extra human player could bring.
All a human player can do this season is drop notes, hit a button to trigger the amplification period, and toss the high note. Those are all very controlled things that are not constantly happening and overall one extra person doing them will not lead to more points unless you (and all your alliance partners) can cycle fast enough that at some point you will need all hands on deck to drop the notes.
However, two robot operators offer a significant advantage over one. One of your operators can be the driver, focusing only on getting the robot around the field, allowing them to devote their full attention to the other bots and hazards on the field. The other operator can control the subsystems on your robot like the intake and shooter mechanisms, that person will be able to focus on exactly when and how to do each job and, with the proper software and alignment commands, not have to worry about getting the bot lined up. This will greatly reduce cycle time since the driver will not have to worry about stopping everything and diverting focus to take the shot or pick up a note every single time. It also allows each player to master at their one task, much better than if a single person had to learn and attempt to master both.
The field was designed for a certain number of people in the human player locations (annoyingly cramped as it is). Add more and you may run into accidently creating safety violations. Just putting that out there.
You’re more likely to get an advantage by making your operator your secondary drive coach, keeping an eye on the field for your driver, letting them know where to go next. This frees up your coach to focus on the overall alliance strategy. A fourth human player on the field is likely to hurt more than help.
One big “citation needed” on this whole paragraph. I’m not saying that what you claim is never true, but by no means is it universally true. With sufficient automation and driver practice, you can mitigate any issues with diverting attention as the function buttons become second nature, and you have the advantage of eliminating timing and communication issues between driver and operator. Obviously this won’t work for every team, but I am unconvinced that what you claim as advantages are more advantageous than what can be achieved with one driver and decent automation.
I am glad from 2005 to 2022 we overcame our significant disadvantage of a single driver. A pair of division wins, a pair of division finalists, and 13 regional wins in that time with such a handicap man if we would have had 2 drivers maybe we could be a multi time world champion instead.
In all seriousness single driver with a 2nd set of eyes/hands for whatever was needed worked for us but we never shamed anyone or thought we were at any sort of advantage or disadvantage thanks to it, it’s just what we preferred. We almost went back to it this year but our second driver has a single task for most of the game and controls our end game deployment and initiation.
I do agree that this may not be true for every team but I will still argue that the benefits of having two robot operators - one for driving and one for subsystems control - are vastly greater than a single driver.
Dividing tasks between two operators allows each to specialize and focus, significantly reducing the cognitive load and multitasking demands on a single individual. This specialization can lead to more efficient task execution and reduced errors, therefore each operator can develop deeper expertise in their respective roles.
While automation and practice will indeed enhance a single operator’s efficiency, the inherent limitations of human attention and the risk of cognitive overload, particularly in high-stakes and competitive environments, cannot be ignored. Even with the best automation, a driver still has to switch their attention between driving and controlling other parts of the robot, like the intake and shooter.
It’s clear that the approach can vary by team and situation. However, the division of tasks between two operators inherently streamlines the process and minimizes the cognitive strain associated with multitasking, thereby optimizing team performance.
Our team has found this not to be the case. Each drive team has roughly 120 seconds to score as many cycles as possible. The amount of time required to coordinate and communicate robot actions between two people eats into time that could otherwise be used for scoring points.
“Put the intake out!”
“Shoot! Shoot!”
“Intake! Quick!”
It takes moments for our brains to recognize the need to communicate, form words, direct our mouths and diaphragms to speak those words, then the other person to hear those words (in a loud environment) decode the words, perceive their meaning, and then direct their hands to act on a controller. Even if all of that happens in a quarter of a second, two interactions per cycle for 10 cycles, that’s 5 seconds. We can do a lot in 5 seconds at the end of a match.
You mention the benefits of reduced cognitive load, but what about the cognitive load of two-way communication between drivers to accomplish simple robot tasks?
Our approach has been increasingly to automate as much “quick reflex” actions and put them on the driver controls. Intake, “target lock”, scoring. Our co-driver has “panic” controls that run each motor forward and back separately to fix problems on the fly, and maybe some less time-sensitive controls, but our co-driver is largely a spotter or guide for the driver, thinking a couple steps ahead and communicating next steps when needed.
I disagree with this assertion. The driver is always driving somewhere on the field with a purpose: either they’re driving towards a note or the source to intake, or they’re driving toward the amp or speaker to score, or etc. etc. So they really aren’t switching attention between different tasks, and as long as your controls are sufficiently simple (e.g. one button press to aim and shoot, one button press to automatically intake), then there is really no concern about overwhelming the driver with controls.
I’m just going to echo what @coderkevin said above. Removing the communication barrier between driver and operator is inherently streamlined, not the opposite. And as discussed above, I don’t really think this situation is comparable to what people typically mean when discussing “multitasking” since they are focused on one specific goal with both driving and operating mechanisms. Just think of any video game where you control both the movement and actions of your player character (e.g. any first-person shooter). I don’t think anyone would realistically suggest players would be better if one person controlled the movement and aiming while another controlled the trigger/reload/switching arms. Exact same scenario when it comes to controlling robots, it’s just a matter of getting controls simple enough to fit on one controller.
