Throughout my years on my team, specifically in relation to my observations of our drive team, I was wondering how it varied amongst frc teams. On our team we have an entirely student led drive team. This consists of the standard hp, driver, drive coach, and what we call the operator, some call secondary driver, etc… In past years this operator role has been for communication to the driver on the things specific to you whilst the drive coach handled more broad match strategy decisions. Additionally, before this year our operator controlled certain parts of the robot such as when to active our manipulator and when to extend the arm. This year, due to the relative simplicity of the game, we have switched to all buttons being able to be pressed by our driver, on a razer xbox controller, which allows us to have more controllable features on one controller. This has changed the role of the operator more towards a secondary drive coach esque role and less of a secondary driver. The point of this all is to ask, what tasks are each of your drive team roles responsible for, what is the chain of command, and also some teams have adult drive coaches, for those teams, what do you see as the advantages of this and why you think its better than having a student drive coach. TLDR: what does each drive team member do?
Thanks, sorry for my grammar, and yeah cya round here I guess
This year our team had a single driver (me), a coach, and a technician. The coaches job was to provide information to me on where robots were, what notes to get, and where to score, as well as directing where i should drive to get from point A to point B. The technician’s main job was to help carry the robot into the field and last minute checks like: do we have a battery, are we turned on, etc.
All students, our team does not do mentors on driveteam.
We also had like 4 trained human players, and we’d just pick them based on where they liked being, (amp or source), and what our alliance needed
This is the method we have used since the introduction of the Technician.
- Technician: Student. A member of the controls team responsible for setting up the driver station, testing controllers, selecting auto modes and ensure the robot is connected. This student is the only member of the drive team that is also part of the pit crew. They review logs and perform pre-match/post-match checks.
- Driver / Operator: We still have robot functions split between the two positions. The functionality split is game dependent. The operator does act as a 2nd drive coach for things associated with the current action. It is critically important that these two positions communicate effectively and efficiently.
- Human Player: We typically stick with one student for a tournament.
- Robot field set up: This varies based on the game or personnel between driver/operator/human player. They are responsible to set up the robot on the field and handle the robot cart (which is non-trival for our team.)
- Drive Coach: That’s me as a mentor. My job is planning and communicating match strategy, making adjustments during game play and what is the next move. I try to remain big picture while the driver/operator deal with the robot. There are other CD threads that go into advantages / disadvantages of an adult drive coach so I will not repeat that here.
David
Thanks, what do you see as the advantage of not having an operator/ have you ever considered having one?
Hopefully obvious goal: Pick a division of labor which achieves the best overall outcome. Usually that means points/wins. Also might imply student growth, making friends with teams, etc.
If there’s enough independent robot functions to split between two humans, it’s always good to get folks “stick time”. However, consider the cost of that coordination.
If you can get down to a single person driving all robot operations… Here’s how we’ve thought about it:
- Driver prioritizes thinking about the current step, and the next step.
- “Operator” plans out the next three steps, and feeds them one-by-one to the Driver
- Coach coordinates with other teams, considering ~8-10 steps in the future, and communicates those to the operator.
Thanks, for communication within your dt, do you speak directly to the driver or is that info more relayed through the operator, and what calls are the operator responsible for, for example if there is an amplified speaker at the end of the match and you could shoot the note or climb, who makes that call?
Thats a good way of putting it, when the operator “feeds” the steps, are they specific or more broad allowing the driver to make certain decisions ex: go cycle and score vs cycle but go under the stage on the way in and then around to the source side on the way out
We had one in 2023, (in 2023 it was me actually, someone else drove), this year it was largely a time decision, some major issues with our mechanical processes led to us not having time to train people, and I already knew how, and felt comfortable both driving and operating at the same time. For our off season competitions we will have one operator and one driver (although we are once again having similar issues, and are running out of time to train)
Our drive is all students except for an occasional circumstance.
Driver responsibilities are split up depending on what work best for the game.
Coach is responsible for big picture, strategy, and interacting with the other partners on the field.
Human player does human player stuff. They are responsible for knowing how their position fit into the bigger picture.
Technician is generally a programmer or from pit crew.
Robot field set varies year to year, but we practice before events and have a routine.
We have a mentor off field coach that generally makes sure the drive team head is in the right place. They also deal with the rare occasion that requires an adult.
Got it, thanks! Time is always a struggle lol
Time is always the struggle in FRC unfortunately, and money
For the last couple years, we’ve prioritized a robot that can be driven by one driver instead of two. In terms of exact role distribution between drive team members, it can definitely vary with the game. Here’s what this year looked like:
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Driver - handles all robot controls on field, also does setup/removal of robot from the field. Usually sets up the game piece in robot for auto
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Drive coach - we’ve run with a student coach when we have students capable of filling this role, though definitely many teams opt for an adult drive coach instead. We tend to see coach role as facilitating communication with driver about bigger-picture things happening on the field and verbal cues about timing, adapting strategy mid-match, relaying info to alliance partners, etc.
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Technician - sets up computer and selects auto. Our technician is someone with code team experience
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Human Player - whatever the HP action happens to be in the game, we try to have someone who has specifically practiced for this role. This year, we had plenty of field-scale high note tossing practice and we prioritized our HP being at the amp.
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HP or 2nd Driver or 2nd Coach - we always bring a 5th drive team member out, but what role is right is very dependent on the game, our strategy, or the robot design. For Crescendo at our first event, we ran with 2 people in a coach-like role (one person focused on communication to driver and the other focused on communication with alliance/Amp HP). We realized before our 2nd event, that our biggest bottleneck was actually interacting with HPs and other robots at the source. So for our 2nd event, we switched to running 2 Human Players from our team every match for 2nd and 3rd regional: one at the amp and one at the source. I think this wasn’t all that common, as we found we needed to show refs the rules about drive team composition so that they understood that this configuration was allowed. For our off-season events, we’ve done both these configurations, mainly dependent on who we are training for new roles.
Drive coach here. I’ll try to sum ours up. I hope this thread doesn’t turn into a “student vs. mentor drive coach” discussion, that horse has been dead for a long time now. End all is: if everyone is comfortable with their roles and it works, “don’t fix what isn’t broken.”
Our team from day one has decided to have an adult drive coach, usually an alumni with experience that isn’t too far up in age from who is on the drive team (at least within the same or next generation.) I have personally noticed some drive teams feel intimidated by much older mentor drive coaches, I’m not 100% sure why, its just something I have noticed. I don’t mind it personally, but I may be biased because I’ve known a lot of our local teams for 8+ years now and many have not changed mentors much.
That being said, I mainly allow driver, op, HP, and technician to go and do strategy with the other drive teams to avoid making any students feel intimidated by an adult being there directing, and I step back and stay in pit or watch over their shoulders. I don’t butt in unless I am asked to, need to advocate for my drive team, or it’s otherwise absolutely necessary (excluding eliminations, I stay in every strategy discussion once we are on an alliance.)
Our roles:
- Driver / Operator (Op): Always students. Usually always interchangeable, we try to have one good backup for both in case of illness or Dean’s List/Impact Award interviews. Driver has priority over the majority of the robot controls, if it is more brain power than they can handle then we offload some of the decision-making to the op (revving up a shooter, manipulating an arm, running an intake). Some years op was almost like a second drive coach, usually ends up being a second drive coach if we are doing defense strategy so there’s two sets of eyes instead of just one for the drive coach. I found, at least on our team, the driver prefers to have controls pertaining to intake pickup, lowering, and raising, and anything that controls drive train movement. Operators tend to want to control anything outside of that, so like an arm, a shooter, etc. I think this comes down to personal preference, and we always let them pick what controls “feel” best for them. I always tell my drivers that their muscle memory is important, so we repeat runs over and over and over again until they can run the robot in their sleep basically.
I’ll just quote this because this is pretty much identical to our team’s dynamic. I like my operator to be my second eyes if I miss something, and the driver should focus solely on the next steps of the robot. Me and op relay any important information. Driver can override if they feel its important to do so (rarely, but there’s been moments when both me and op missed something and driver saw it.)
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Human Player (HP): Always students. We have one backup for each HP allowed on the field, if we have enough willing members.
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Technician (tech): Ensures robot is good to go before the match, watches for breaks or issues during the match, and ensures robot is ready again after the match is over. In charge of manuvering cart, driver and op (if capable) usually load robot on and off field. Helps set up the driver station from time to time, but I help offload that rush from field>cart>grabbing station>field>setup station to get us up and running faster by setting up the driver station and picking the auto while the driver and op set up on the field. Tech then steps in with any combo of drive team members to offload robot from cart to pit for repairs or next match prep. This has changed year to year for us, sometimes our Safety Captain prepares charged batteries for our upcoming matches (haven’t had a reliable student Safety Captain since COVID, working on that) or the tech/driver/op do this before matches start, during match breaks, or whenever they can. We try to have 2-3 batteries ready to go, we have a compartment in our robot cart that can comfortably fit 6 batteries if needed. Usually we try to avoid having pit and drive team mix, but we found that the drive team is more efficient if they have put in the hours to understand the machine they are driving. That being said, we keep enough pit crew members off drive team to allow the drive team to breathe after a particularly stressful match that ends in a major repair. I’d say this is up to a team’s individual choice and how many experienced members they have in either department at that point. I’m personally picky about who is the technician because they need to have extensive knowledge in all parts of the robot, so when something goes REALLY wrong they are equipped to handle it without relying too heavily on mentors.
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Drive Coach (Myself): As I said before, we prefer adult drive coaches, but have been open to student drive coaches if the need/want arises. So far everyone on the team prefers me or another alumni as drive coach (they specify alumni so it is someone familiar with drive team dynamics and field strategy.) Considered to be the match eagle-eye with op assisting when needed. I relay strategy changes or important field info to the rest of the alliance when it arises so driver and op can focus on the match at hand, there’s been times a full strategy flip was required and having someone able to walk away to give a heads up to other drive teams real quick won a match or two. I am also a data nerd so I’m all over statbotics, our scouting data, and TBA trying to figure out how we can win our next match, or what strategy might be best based on the weaknesses/strengths of the alliance and relay that to my drive team before they go and strategize with the rest of the alliance.
I tried to be thorough with all of our responsibilities to give some insider perspective. Open to any questions. 
Seems like our philosophy is a little different than most of the posts here. We value getting as many of the students involved on the drive team as possible, with some caveats.
We have one main driver and one auxiliary/operator. We always split our driver duties even if they don’t really need to be. We like to keep our drivers as consistent as possible year-to-year. We also try to have a backup for each of these positions, just in case.
We like to have 2-3 human players. We train each of them so anyone of them can play at any time. These are usually seniors.
We will also have 2-3 technicians. This one is surprisingly iffy on how many we have each year and is highly dependent on the students.
The only position that is fairly static is our drive coach. It has usually been a mentor, but not always.
So, we give anywhere from 6 - 8 students on the team to be active participants on the drive team each year. This works well for us, but, of course, YMMV…
I communicate with both the driver / operator. What I’m communicating will vary by game or role in the match plan. Here’s an example:
During playoffs this year in Houston, our role was feeder bot. First action in tele-op is to start feeding any mid field notes (those were usually gone) then start feeding from the human player station. The driver/operator go do that without my help. As a side note, I do recommend that everyone alliance member knows first move in tele-op for any match plan.
During amplified periods, I would tell the team to shoot during this cycle instead of feed. I also make the call of when to climb. We determined where we are climbing pre-match, so unless we have to do something different a simple climb command is enough.
There are a lot of potential coaching changes that may occur beyond timing in a simple match plan like reacting to a partner issue or an issue with your robot. The driver/operator is responsible to let me know if they are experiencing issues. Communication is critical. Keep it to the point.
David
Here’s the breakdown of our driveteam:
Driver
Drives the robot and control when we intake and shoot/score
Operator
Is responsible for the more intricate controls like climbing or tasks like amping this year. Also responsible for calling out what cycles we’re doing (scoring locations) and serves as the defacto drive coach when our drive coach is working with other teams on the alliance.
In 2024, we were lucky enough to have a capable enough driver to have 2 human players but that is not will likely not continue
Human Player
Our Human Player has 2 jobs:
- Be human player and not get fouls
- Make sure that the other human players on the alliance do their jobs and don’t get fouls. You would be surprised how many teams have human players that either won’t drop the game piece because they’re watching their robot or just don’t know what to do.
Drive Coach
Runs the drive team and is responsible for approving the match strategy and calling out any audible changes to our strategy mid-match. The run our pre-match huddle to clarify any questions or roles of each team and get them psyched for the match. Is responsible for calling time left in the match and when to climb or whether we should continue to score. They will also sometimes help coach another team that might not know exactly what to do in their role in the match.
Match Strategist
Responsible for making our strategy board for each match and working with the other team’s on the alliance to be on the same page. Will then give the board to the drive coach and get the strategy approved.
I have had discussions on the pros/cons of an adult drive coach for years now and this is what I came to:
[details=“Adult”]
Pros:
- An adult is always responsible for what happens in a match. Even if the drivers made a mistake, all criticism is directed to the adult who can handle it and will make corrections/give criticism at their discretion.
- An adult mentor stays from year to year so there is not only consistency in terms of the role but they can carry their experience from year to year rather than a senior student who likely was on drive team before. Being a drive coach, especially at the top level is extremely stressful and experience reigns supreme.
- This one is a sad reality but adults garner more respect. It’s much less likely that another adult drive coach will abuse you if you were an adult and you are more likely to be taken seriously. It also is more likely that the students on the drive team will respect the decisions of an adult and have less drama with them than a fellow student.
Cons:
- You are giving up on the personal development that comes with a leadership role like being drive coach. It is a great opportunity for that student to learn to effectively communicate and work with others in a capacity much greater than just being in FRC.
That being said, this growth is only ever applied to a single student each year at the cost of stability and accountability being in the hands of an experienced adult. And if you’re trying to compete at the highest levels, it’s necessary for continued success.