How many drivers does your team use? I know it’s been discussed to death, but I want to get some actual percentages?
Edit: due to the intense amount of confusion I have gotten, I mean 1 or 2 people controlling the robot.
One driver, one operator for all the auxiliary stuff.
Driver should also never need to take their thumbs off the joysticks
This is such a a weird poll… Drivers and Operators are two very different roles. I’ve never heard it called 2 drivers.
“you control the left wheels, I get the right” doesn’t seem very effective
I’m not sure if I answered wrong now. We have two people control the robot. But there is only 1 driver. Maybe an issue of OPs choice of words but I answered 1 because of this
Edit: I did change my answer to 2 after OP clarified
We’ve tried to do a single driver (no operator) a few times in the past and have never been successful. Some of our robots have been really close (where the operator may only do the end game task and the single driver is able to do everything else). It generally requires a lot of automation to get down to a single driver, but if you can do it, there is generally benefits relative to cycle time.
in my experience, 1 driver (no operator) has always done better
I’m pretty sure the poll is about whether you have 2 people operating the robot (1 driver and one operator). I honestly don’t think they were asking whether you had 2 drivers. I believe they used the term driver in the same sense that we talk about the drive team.
At least that’s how I answered the poll.
Yeah I meant 1 or 2 people controlling the robot. I think the game manuals calls both drivers.
Thanks for clarifying, I switched my answer now
Do you think changing the title to 1 or 2 driver/operators would be less confusing?
Yes, but I might be the only person who was confused. Most everyone else seemed to get what you meant
If this poll is concerning one driver during one match and another in a different match… No. I hate it when teams do this. It is nice to know you can have someone else that can operate the robot, but one consistent driver throughout the event is going to perform better basically all the time.
We have tried this many times and it mostly goes badly. It did save us when the main driver caught a flu and couldn’t come to our first event ONCE. The backup was ready to do the job. However this isn’t the same as taking away a qual match from your main driver to give the backup practice. Qual matches are not where you practice.
Also from a scouting standpoint they may see the performance in that specific match and downgrade the robot on their pick list and not realize it was a different human behind the wheel in that specific instance.
This!!! Especially driving swerve, you need to keep your thumbs on sticks at all times. Give everything else to the operator. It is also firmly my opinion that driver needs to have intake controls. Trying to sync that up between two people is just not gonna be as good, and active intakes are always better when the driver knows how to use movement while intaking to their advantage.
To be fair, they do only say, “drivers behind the lines”… and nothing about operators or human players so that means they can be over the line!
it’s a joke
It is relatively easy to make the same argument for shooting (or placing if it is a pick and place game). The driver knows best when they are in final position to execute the score and could (should) be the one pulling the trigger to score.
Depending on the endgame, you could also make the argument that the driver knows when the robot is in the correct position to execute the endgame task. So they could (should) do that as well.
If you can automate these functions and turn them into a single press of the bumper or trigger buttons, then the driver wouldn’t need to take his thumbs off the joysticks.
The rules call them both “Drivers”. Our philosophy is that if it relates to robot movement, it goes to the Driver; everything else goes to the Operator.
If the original question relates to having a “rotating drive team”, then there is only one Driver and one Operator all competition season.
What we do is, the Operator/Driver2 should have all the functions that can happen ahead of the actual action, and the Driver1 should have the final trigger on that action.
Example: Operator selects what the objective is and it changes the robot into Speaker mode or Amp mode or Pickup mode. The driver is the one that actually pulls the trigger to fire or deploy the intake though. Last year our Operator was the one that was selecting the game piece mode and scoring location, lots to do. This year, probably not that much.
Depending on how complex the end game action is, the Operator might be entirely in charge of that too. We had the Operator do our monkey bar climb, but obviously didn’t need it last year.
There was another similar thread somewhere else.
Everything on the robot should be automated enough such that a single driver can do everything.
Only possible exception being the climb at the end (we’re not doing the trap).
Driving swerve, shooting, intaking, scoring in the amp can all be done with a single controller with thoughtful automation. Who knows, maybe climb could be thrown in there too.
Even if our robot could be fully operated by a single driver we would probably put a second student on the field to have another set of eyes on the game and to give them the experience behind the glass.