The strategy sub-team in our team is currently working on revamping our drive team selection process. We’re making rubrics on every role so there isn’t bias, and I’m currently trying to find things that make a technician good. There’s some obvious benchmarks; being able to identify issues with the bot, being technically knowledgeable, knowing the bot’s limitations, but is there anything I’m missing that I should include in our selection process?
Also, if you guys have any advice on recruiting the other roles that’d also be appreciated.
Instead of using it as a strategic advantage 2491 uses it as a way to get our students on the field. The Minnesota regionals are very flashy and being on the field is a unique experience. This is why we use this rule as a way for students to enjoy competition more. If something does break on the way there, or there is an emergency fix, we will bring someone else in if the person on technician cannot fix the issue.
What I can say with my limited drive team experience is that your technician just needs to be able to work the drivers station, and the other parts are optional (although feel free to correct me). For the other roles, what I’ve found is this:
You want a driver that can drive smooth over anything else. Your maxim should be “Slow is smooth is fast”. The driver is the main event, and you should focus on raising their skill the most.
For operator, get someone who works very well with the driver and can adapt and react quickly. Their intuition of the controls is also important, but working well with the driver is the most important part.
For drive coach, get somebody that is great at short and effective communication, knows field strategy well, and can make quick decisions. Both the driver and operator should be able to communicate well with them. Overall, the drive team should work very effectively as a team.
Someone who comes often/stays late at practice sessions, therefore knows the bot really well and also helps change batteries and do regular maintenance.
This. Opportunities to be on the field are indispensable for members, and technician is one of the lower skill required roles and so is usually perfect for getting students onto the field. Our technician for 2 years became the Captain of the team and Operator, and I suspect a little that the hype from getting to be on the field and handle the robot had a part to play in his enthusiasm. Give newer students roles, trust and encourage and support them, and 9/10 times they will grow in skill and confidence and motivation immensely.
Gonna throw two slight wrinkles into the selection of Technicians.
The Technician is allowed to be a mentor, provided that the Coach is not also a mentor.
In cases where there are not enough Human Players provided by the alliance to man enough stations, one Technician may be pulled in as an emergency Human Player, provided that said Technician is a student.
Partly because of 2, I can’t recommend using an adult as the technician. I can see a case or three where a team should opt to use an adult, for whatever reason; most teams don’t and I don’t disagree with that. One of the few cases would be to get a student Coach experience, while still having a mentor backing them up. Team decisions are team decisions, though, and most teams put student(s) in the role.
Also because of 2, I will strongly recommend that your Technician, whoever they are, knows the rules for the drive team, especially: no you can’t signal the drive team as that’s a yellow card, and the actual circumstances in which they could find themselves as a Human Player (which have nothing to do with a partner’s robot being on the field or not–for all y’all trying to get your technician reps as HP in practice, pay attention to that).
As far as how to select the Technician: Pick whoever best fits the role of cart handler, driver station handler, remote diagnostician, sometimes media person, maybe robot picker-upper, for the match you’re going to.
We select driver, buttons & human player {1} through skill tryouts.
We also want (the/a) Design / Manufacturing subteam leader and (the/a) Wiring / Programming subteam leader on drive team. Pretty much always we get at least one of those “naturally” in the skills-based selection process and fill the other via technician.
We think this way because we are very often still diagnosing/ fixing issues while queuing.
For example, at Carver in 2022 our pit was literally a 10 minute walk to and from the field (0.6km). Add that to the time waiting in queue and you can see why our robot wasn’t actually IN the pits all that much.
Having people who intimately know the robot while in queue is invaluable.
{1} Theoretically Drive Coach too, but it’s been a while since we had more than one viable candidate for that role. YMMV