Hey guys,
Our team has been trying to get every ounce of speed out of our robot. We’ve been thinking that maybe the dual joysticks are the way to go. I’m just wondering if two joysticks are truly faster than one. Also i’m going to add relative driver control if we go with just one.
Two joysticks doesn’t inherently make anything “faster”. In fact, it requires even more practice between the two drive team members to coordinate everything perfectly.
We started the year using two joysticks and found that the two team members simply were not thinking about the same thing at all times and very simple, but game affecting, mistakes were made. In the end we decided to go back to one joystick.
Generally, one controller is easier if you have a good driver, as they don’t need to communicate with each other to plan what they are doing, especially if you have drive on one controller and lift/intake on another.
However, sometimes, it may help to have a second driver with a controller for secondary functions. For example, if you have a complex intake that needs to be manipulated while moving to the next post, you could have a second driver do that.
Same answer as post#3, but in different words:
On the plus side: Two CPUs (drivers) provide 2x the IO (eyes and ears), and 2x the CPU (brain power).
On the minus side: Two CPUs can be hard to synchronize, it takes practice.
Based on my own observations, I would try to avoid using two drivers if at all possible. It seems to me that when mistakes get made, the two drivers start blaming each other, feelings get hurt, and the knife fights begin. It takes a while for two kids to really get in synch with each other, and though I know it’s possible they can eventually work as one mind, the learning curve often isn’t a very pretty shape.
One good driver, assisted by software that customizes the joystick buttons the way he or she wants them to be can probably do much better than any two kids driving at the same time.
Now, having said that, I agree with what Kevin says:
From what I’ve seen, what makes a good driver good is that he or she becomes one with the robot. But that seems to induce a trance that causes the driver to develop a form of tunnel vision that makes it hard to perceive the entire field. The killer app, in my opinion, is a great driver who’s in a trance being guided by a second kid serving only as the guide, who watches the entire field and tells the driver what to do and where to go next.
Just paint flames on the side.
I was thinking some chrome would help.
Seriously though, I would only use two drivers if you have a very complex robot with a lot of different abilities.
Thanks for all the replies guys. It gave us some really good insight as to what we should use. Thanks!
For us we have 3 students, 1 driver and 2 “coaches”, 1 of the coaches is in charge of time and skyrise, the other coach is in charge of informing the driver of what is going on in the match (what the other team is doing and what our alliance is doing) and also SPs and whether we need them. And the driver… drives