How do your teams have your joystick programmed to control your drive train? I’ve seen a lot of tank drives and not much else.
What do you think is best for this year’s competition?
Well, it really depends on what the driver is most comfortable with. For a standard tank drivetrain, most teams use, well, tank drive. When using a holonomic drive, many teams prefer an arcade drive. The two can be modified to fit other drive systems as well though.
Is it harder to maneuver around the field with arcade drive?
It should probably be based on the driver. If the driver has driven a tank drive configuration before, then they should stick with the same controls just for familiarity’s sake. The two main configurations I know of for tank are:
Left joystick: Forward, backward
Right joystick: Turn left, Turn right
or
Left joystick: Left side of drive train: Forward, backward
Right joystick: Right side of drive train: Forward, backward
Neither joystick configuration should limit the range of movement of your robot in anyway since using a combination of both joysticks in either configuration will give you different turning radius’ and what not. Personally I use the first configuration for simplicity and general familiarity. I drove a holonomic drive train last year which uses the first configuration except for adding in strafing capabilities on the left joystick (Left/Right movement). Since I’m also a gamer, I’m familiar with the WASD/left joystick and mouse/right joystick format.
Again, it depends on preference. When you play a first person shooter video game, is it easier to have the camera directly proportional to the y axis, or to have it inverted? Most games offer the option to do both, because different people find different controls easier.
Hm. Yeah I never really understood the inversion option in almost all shooter games. Seems a bit irrelevant since there isn’t really a y-axis in VEX driving. I find it hard to consider people inverting forward/backward and turning though, which are the controls most pertinent to this conversation.
The driver should just choose the most intuitive joystick configuration for precision turns and driving. Forward, backwards, turning in place are all simplistic, but joystick configurations really matter when it comes to precision turns that require the robot to move forward and turn simultaneously.
I was simply providing an analogy as to how different controls fit different drivers.
Ah, yes sorry about that Magicode, misunderstood your post 
Well anyways. To the OP, basically Magicode and I both agree that the driver should be familiar and comfortable with the configuration that he/she chooses, the main choices being arcade and tank drive.
I would have to agree that is really up to your driver.
I think our club has only done “Tank Drive” and everyone is satisfied with it.
I know I personaly like Tank because in my opinion easier to manuever.
Arcade drive is way to crazy for me
Forgive Typos
Typed On Nook
Personaly I like tank drive because it gives more direct control 2 motors to 1 joystick, while an arcade drive is 4 motors to 1 joystick.
With my understanding, (my team uses arcade), this is not true. Our setup controlles either side of our drive on either stick. 2 Motors on left wheels are controlled by left stick, 2 motors on right wheels are controlled by right stick, not all four on one.
Correct me if I misunderstood your post.
But yes, it is all personal preferance. It shouldn’t take long to program each, just try both configurations and see what your diver prefers/is best at.
This is not arcade drive. Arcade drive is when the forward and backward motion of the robot is controlled by the y axis of the left joystick, and the turning motion is controlled by the x axis of the right joystick.
While you could put the forward and backward motion of the robot on the y axis of one joystick, and the tuning motion on the x axis of the same joystick, this is usually not done.
Having each stick control a side of the robot is tank drive.
Interesting variation in practices, which might mean that what you (or driver) thinks is best is not what is best. It might be worthwhile to let the driver have some practice under several methods and ask for pro/con of each of them.
In some ways, its similar to qwerty vs dvorak keyboards: one might be better in theory, but lots of practice with either makes you much better.
Arcade using channel 1,2 is the EasyC default.
Its common in BEST Robots to have arcade on right stick, and arm movement on left stick.
Some BEST teams might still use a long holdover “diagonal drive”:
Tank drive on channels 1 &2 which makes diagonal corners for forward/back.
Oops, sorry about that. My mistake
While it’s true that arcade drive has 4 motors on each joystick, that’s assuming that you only used one joystick at a time. Using both joysticks on arcade drive gives you the same maneuverability and ‘direct control’ as tank drive.
Our team is a little different:
We control the forward and backward movement with our left joystick (to ensure we move forward when we want to), and the turning with our right. We are able to pivot on one side by subtracting (or adding) the right joystick is moving forward. This gives the same functions an tank drive has. I had to take out the backwards pivoting as it was my driver’s preference. This function is also cubed to fit to the motor output (creates a dead zone that fits to the physical dead zone).
EDIT: My bad, I guess this is standard arcade with the backward car turning removed! I thought I made something special.
Is the turning of the robot controlled by the x axis of the right joystick? If so, this is just standard arcade drive. Though removing the backwards car turn is new.
We do arcade, and we have always found that it works better. Plus its way more fun to program. I think the standard arcade function is (y+x)/2 and it works pretty well although we do it a bit differently. The reason we like arcade is because we can use the other joystick to control other functions that need analog control. In the end it depend on the driver but I would encourage you to highly consider arcade, and don’t just do tank because it easier.
[Delta]
We like doing arcade drive because it lets us be more precise with our lifts 
it also makes manual trim possible.