Hey CD, now that we’re a few weeks in, what are your thoughts on spy hand signals for those of you who have competed already? Did you plan to use them and didn’t really pay attention? Do you really have a complicated system that your drivers rely on?
We have implemented the hand signals for the spy with our team. A few of them were derived from another great team in our area, 1939, and their signals from Aerial Assist since they were clear and simple. Ours were mainly developed for shooting or climbing, but we have used it for defenses and lining up. We’ve also found issues once in a while with sitting on top of boulders, so we developed a sign for where our spy will make a fist with one hand and set her other flat on top of it. We had plans to make it slightly more complicated than has panned out with different colored gloves which she still wore, but since then programming developed a vision lineup for us.
I do all of the non-driving functions, and while I’ve found myself able to watch the spy, our main driver doesn’t pay attention to the signals unless I tell them what our spy is telling us. We did not need to rely on it, seeing as how we found it only necessary if there was the Drawbridge in the way of our line of sight.
Our team used them at our first competition and they helped us a lot as shooting with our camera wasn’t working 100%. We had hand signals for forward and backward so we could be aligned with the bottom of the batter. They have helped us tremendoualy so far.
Is there anyone willing to share some of their signals? I am the human player from my team and I have a lot of room to improve with my communication during matches and am looking for ways to get better at it.