I am new to vex as this is my first year/season. I was put into driver right away and didn’t have that much time to practice. This reflected at the competition. Can any experienced drivers please give me some tips for driving the chassis. Maybe even any drills to practice on the field. Any advice and tips is highly appreciated.
Hi! First, how is the configuration of your joystick to your robot? I mean, do you use the two joysticks or only one, how do you turn your robot with the control?
Well I play basketball so I can help in terms of drills. You always want to practice match specific events. Don’t just drive around casually scoring balls. Practice things that can actually happen in the match. I would first practice picking up balls from the walls because that is where a lot of the balls eventually line up. Also just like I do in basketball try to aim and fire as quickly as possible while still retaining your accuracy. Well, the one thing you should always remember is practice match specific events so you can build muscle memory(sort of) and gain familiarity and be prepared for unexpected events (because you practiced them) allowing you to swish the ball instead of bricking it lol.
The main thing I would say is to get as much practice as you can, and make sure you know the controls for the robot perfectly, so that in a match you will never have to think about what joysticks or buttons you need to press, it just comes instinctively (you can practice with the controller behind your back). If you don’t have much time to practice, I would not spend a lot of time firing balls as it’s fun but not really too hard, instead practice things like driving around to collect balls in tough areas, lining up quickly, and firing just one or two to save time. Also get used to using the controls gently and not jerking back and forth at full power.
One thing I always did that I found really helpful was to go through each match in every detail right before it, or at least what I thought was going to happen and we would do. And then also in the pause between auto and driver, ignore the field (get someone else on the drive team to verify the refs counted correctly), and visualize exactly everything you would do next, and exactly how you would control the robot for that.
Also, make sure you have a game plan before the match and discuss it with your partner. The worst thing you can do is just aimlessly drive about and have no idea what you’re going to do next, you will waste way more time than you notice. If during a match you’re not completely sure what to do next, don’t just drive about hoping to find some balls, take a moment (a short one though), take a look where the balls are you want to get, and then get them. Along those lines, you will also want to make strategic plans beforehand, such as if it’s better to get 4 balls and then fire, or line up and fire as soon as you get one.
Thank you guys so much. I will use these tips to improve.
Play driving video games and practice.
Minecraft helps…
Practice. Drive the robot around the pits if you have spare batteries.
One other thing that I see with inexperienced drivers is that they lose reference when the robot is turned around (the front of the robot facing the driver). It just takes practice to train your brain to identify what direction the robot is facing. A driver should be able to drive and turn in reverse as easily as they would going forward.
My advice is learn to multitask and form your motions into one longer motion. Instead of drive stop turn stop intake move forward stop drive to goal stop line up stop fire stop etc, be turning your intake on while you are driving to the ball and be lining up and preparing to fire at the same time. It saves a lot of time.
To add onto this, use a second driver to help multitask. Whether it be intaking, preparing velocity for shots, etc… We have done this since skyrise and our driving has been more efficient.
Plan to practice a LOT. Especially simulation matches. Don’t get discouraged if it still feels weird to drive even after a while - just keep practicing and trying to get more efficient routes and identify derpy strategy things you do. Video analysis helps with that.
I had no clue what I was doing when I started robotics back in toss up (I rewatched worlds matches yesterday and had a good laugh at my horrific driving), but after a lot of practice I began to be a tiny bit respectable. Good luck this season!
Last year was my sophomore year and my first season as a full time vex participant. Given that it was my sophomore year and I didn’t have very tough classes, I spent more time on vex and after we had our design that we weren’t going to change before the next competition I would practice non stop. Our teacher is always in after school (I didn’t have the class last year) and I would practice for 30 min to an hour at a time everyday. It’s probably the only reason we did well at competitions. 
Hope this helps ya guys
Ps: try not to get nervous haha at the beginning of last year I was shaking a bit b4 matches
Thanks for making my regular 5-7 hr practice/tuning sessions feel overboard…
But like others are saying, practice a TON. Over last years season I accumulated well over 1000 hrs with my bot and the vast majority of the time was practicing. I don’t think that’s the norm for most drivers, but it gets the gist across. Practice!!
I’d say that the best way you can get better at driving is practice find a routine that you like to use for getting and launching balls, but you should also practice other techniques. While sticking to one thing is a great way to drive as you can be very effective it only really works in practice, you should try having your team build a very basic direct drive-train only (if you have the parts) and have one of your other members drive that and try to disrupt you while you are driving. At tournaments there will be a lot of teams fighting for position so already having practice with others fighting you will give you a huge advantage. No matter what you need to practice and spend as much time with it as you can, if you need to look down at the joystick when you are driving then you have not practiced enough.
Also, program as much as possible, sometimes a program can be a better “secondary driver” than a teammate. Last year, driving was rough until we switched to robot c and were able to assign functions to most of the things that our secondary driver would normally do.
Practice drills a ton. And practice where the robot is not right in front of you. The field is 12x12 so getting the right perspective of driving like you would in competition is important.
The sight lines to your robot and knowing which way is robot front still requires some practice to control it like it was second nature. Otherwise you will do real good when the robot is in front of you and not so good with other robots.
See how long it takes to grab a stack of balls and shoot them. Do this to clear the field. Practice using the walls to corral the balls into your loader. Make these into repeatable drills. Time your drills to find the best combination of drivers and show improvement.
Practice with others. Getting cooperative interactions of feeding a second shooting bot (or being fed), climbing, as well as having another robot blocking your sight line helps. Also playing aggressively against another robot in practice helps your driving. Know how to knock the corner of an opponent in this game to get their aim off with the least possible movement.
Programming buttons to automate tasks helps a ton. This makes it so you are not fiddling with joysticks to get it just right.
thnks guys. i really appreciate the help and support.