I’ve been having some troubles when selecting the pilot for the team… i’ve already tried to make a kind of competition, like the robot skills , each pilot drives 1 minute and the best is the “chosen one”. But it’s not working =/ last competition we had a lot of problems because of the lack of attention and knowledge about the robot…
Do you guys have any ideia about pilot selection??
PLEASE HELP ME OUT! ^^
Does everyone on the team want to drive the robot? Surely some people just like to build and/or program. So that might eliminate a few people there.
Perhaps you could have everyone who wants to drive spend a few minutes (like you already have) showing off their driving skills to the team. After everyone has shown off their skills, your whole team could then vote on a couple of drivers. I imagine you might want 2 or 3, in case 1 is sick or can’t make a match.
Then perhaps have those 2 or 3 rotate who drives in each match. That way they can all get experience.
If you have too many people who want to be drivers, perhaps a second team could be formed? You could also have some requirements to be a driver, such as drivers have to help out with programming and/or building.
You might also consider creating a robot that requires two drivers, that way you can have more people getting experience and practice at every driving session. Two robots that require two drivers… that’d be 4 drivers and 2-4 backup drivers (for just in case).
It really varies from team to team how they do it. You already have the right idea though have each person compete and see who does the best job. If it’s all about the same then maybe make the decision based one who has been at the most meetings or put the most amount of work in. After that maybe who is the oldest, that is seniors get preference over freshmen.
Well, thanks for the help =D you really gave me ideas, both posts were pretty nice. Well I will add to the requirements to help more on building and/or programming stuff.
I have 4 interested pilots, but there’s no way i can make another team, so I think I’ve already made my mind about how to choose the pilot. ^^
Thanks for the support.
Don’t forget to pick pilots (with an s). It would suck for your team if your single pilot had some situation and couldn’t drive and you had no one else that was practicing or training to drive. You team would suffer an inexperienced driver for no reason other than lack of preparation 
I’d think that people who play more console games would be the most aptly suited (assumming that they know the capabilities of the robot). Seriously, the ability to adapt to situations, compete, and work under pressure fits pretty well. With the one minute shifts thing, there might be some problems with how there’s pressure at the competition and whatnot, as well as the amount of practice each person has had beforehand. But something like that would work. It would also probably be a good idea to have a consensus with most of your team.
We currently have 10 students and are looking to add 10 more, for 2 teams. Unfortunately, 15+ of them want to be drivers (pilots) or coaches.
My plan is to make requirements that they must pass before even being considered as drivers or coaches
A lot depends on your goals for your team. Sometimes I will put in a younger, less skillful driver because he/she has shown devotion to the team, especially if the veteran drivers haven’t been as involved as they were at first. Other times I’ll rotate more drivers in to give maximum exposure (involve as many students as reasonably possible). This is generally not the best strategy for scoring well, but it’s a very good strategy for getting lots of people excited about robotics.
We average about 5 roboteers per team. All of our robots require a driver and operator. During the qualification rounds all the roboteers get to play all three positions (coach is the 3rd). If they make the finals then the team can decide who gets to drive / operate. The non-driving players then rotate through the coach position.
For what it’s worth for the big robot we have driving tryouts where students get multiple runs. They are in different pairings so we can figure out the best possible pairS. The pairS are then swapped back and forth during the rounds.
Hum… nice ideas… well i just CAN’t make another team, we don’t have enough resources. But I’ve enjoyed all the ideas, maybe I’l apply a litlle bit of every one. ^^
Ordered in my opinion of importance (a lot taken from a mentor of a very sucessful team)
Good drivers can be trained with practice… the first two are not so easy to get.
How did we choose? We have 40+ people in our team. Then second biggest in New Zealand, but we take the most people to the small events. We did a small drivers test for the first two drivers, one who’s probably on the the best in New Zealand. Then since we have a third robot, we had to choose who. We set up a 2 goal field with one goal on each side and a cube next to each goal. You had to take the cube from the first goal and take it to the one opposite then pick up the cube and take it back to the other goal. As fast as possible. And then we ended up with times of 29s, 30s and 31s (but i was timed differently to the others, so i actualy got 30. But w/e off topic.) and then the three people after us were backup drivers. Although for the third robot, it was made and then we had a comp the next day, and one of the drivers didn’t turn up so how we decided, let anybody who wants to drive have a go mucking around on a set up field, and whoever looked the most promising got to drive. But both those ways are based on just driver skill and not team commitment.
In my experience, there are a few things I found helpful to driving.
Nothing else is coming to mind at the moment, other than things already stated. hope this helps.
-Andrew
Some teams choose based on qualities such as:
[LIST]
*]Work Ethic
*]Attitude
*]Leadership Ability
*]Maturity
*]Ability to Communicate
*]Team Involvement
*]Knowledge of Robot
[/LIST]
I always say… I can train a monkey to drive a robot… Driving skill is often a secondary consideration.
I would add:
[LIST]
*]Understanding of game
*]Ability to translate game knowledge into driving
*]Drivers: willingness and ability to follow directions
*]Coaches: ability to analyze the field, turn that into directions, and communicate that to the drivers in real time
[/LIST]
Hummm. Interesting… I think now I have the perfect 2 people to drive, but I will also make some test(including ther knowlegde about the game rules and aspects). We are a 7-people team so it’s not going to be so dificult. ^^
I was on a team of 1, which made deciding the driver easy, but for the larger 254 teams, we decided the driver based on who had worked the most on the robot. If there where people equally qualified time-wise, the captain of 254 picked the drivers and operators based on previous experience and driving skill. So the main thing that I would look for in picking a driver would be commitment, and than the ability to cooperate with the coach and other teams.
With larger teams, the best way to choose a driver would probably be a system off tryouts and voting, but the final decision should be the mentor’s and captain’s.
My team also thinks that gaming helps a lot with driving and reactions, so our team captain is trying to make it mandatory for drivers to play Halo on the flight to distant competitions.
Halo, hah!
Play something like UT2k4 with mouse sensitivity up and highest difficulty against humans, where if you’re tired you find it hard to follow the movements of the other players. That’s training.
For our group, selection was simple because we are now a 3 man group for the moment.
We had the main driver who controlled the movement mechanism and anything which cannot be adjusted through driving. The most important thing is to listen to the coach and the other driver.
Then there is the auxillary driver who has the job of predicting what the driver wants to do and getting the arms/ legs/ movable objects where they can perform that function. The drivers should know each other well and have trust in each other to each do their best.
Finally, the coach should be somebody who is situationally aware and can quickly and effectively give suggestions based on where and what everybody else is doing.
I would think that the most important thing is the communication and trust that everybody who is part of the drive team should have in each other.
A few criteria for choosing drivers. This is mostly stuff that’s already been said, but It’s nice to have them in one place:
1: Desire to drive - Obviously the people who want to do it would be a good place to start. Narrow it down from here. Our team had p;enty of people who really had no interest in robotics, but the competition had criteria such as oral presentation and written reports as well
2: Previous experience - have they driven a lot of robots, RC cars, model airplanes, etc… before. It also helps if they are into video games. Our two best drivers had lots of experience with most of the stuff I just mentioned.
3: Skill with the particular machine - have a driving contest for those interested. See who does best.
4: Availability - The drivers need to be available to practice with the robot to really be skilled with it. Make sure their schedules are clear around the time of the competition. In an ideal world I was our top driver, but I had 2 other engagements on the same day as the competition and one of them was in another state.
5: Cooperation and attitude - Pretty self explanatory.
I strongly recommend you have at least five drivers (if possible) on your team so that at least one of them will be available.