I want to try and get better at driving for competitions, any tips?
Are there any good mediums to practise in if you don’t have a bunch of time to be in-person, in your club’s courts? (like a video game or something with transferable skills)
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practice specific things that you aren’t good at, for example, climbing or sticking mogos instead of focusing on stuff that you are already good at. There is a app that I don’t know what it’s called that you can drive robots on a field (someone else please link this id like to have it too)
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My tip would be strategy. I see teams so often make bad choices when driving. My strat is EPs or effective points. stealing a yellow goal would be worth 40 ep and balancing a goal would be only 20 goals. try and maximizing EPs for better results. EPs also count on the defense. protecting a yellow mogos is worth more than stealing another team amogos. While practicing physical movements will help, strat is free, fast, and can be done anywhere.
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I think that you should use comfortable controls. Try and make your controls quick and easy to get to, and the more you use them, you’ll eventually just have it in muscle memory.
If you have a PS4 or something that you use a controller for, you could just practice on that without an app, really just visualize it. **
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that seems like a great idea to get better, how would you go about getting better at playing around the other bots on the court in matches?
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XRC simulator is a pretty good simulator. Has VRC, FRC and FTC games on there.
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I feel like trainers often won’t have the same quirks as a regular bot. most bots have small imperfections like 32511A’s bot which will drop a goal if a sharp change in direction is made. Also they don’t have many features a diverse bot may have.
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while i agree that trainers might not be ideal, i do think tht they’re better than nothing. if you can’t spend a bunch of time wiht your actual bot it’s the next best thing imo.
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Practice. A lot. In person.
If you are effective at doing things fast, maybe work on strategy.
Build a pushbot that’s stronger and faster than your robot, and have a teammate play illegal defense on you while you practice. That will force you to learn how to get out of bad situations
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that’s incredibly smart.
the only risk is damage to your bot but if it’s built sturdily then that should be no issue
If playing defense on your bot can damage it, you’re much better off finding out in practice than at a comp
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The OP made this post precisely because they are unable to do that.
If you need practice scoring points quickly, practicing driver skills really helps. I’ve been going at it for a while and my cycle time for elevating goals has never been better.
Just look on YouTube at people’s skills runs and try to copy/modify them to fit your needs. Then just practice your route.
Edit: also remote control cars and drones really help with the finger dexterity too
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Start slow, efficient and accurate, giving yourself time to plan the next bit of your trajectory. Do that with a multiplier <1 on all the motor speeds. 0.5 or 0.3 maybe. Start annoyingly slow so you can see exactly how much movement you’re wasting, and you can control arrival perfectly. As you nail each speed, raise the multiplier a bit till it gets tricky again, then back off a bit and do more practice. For just driving practice, you could have a couple of shoulder buttons increase/decrease speed multiplier.
Whenever you’re struggling with something, slowing down and looking more clearly at what’s happening in detail is often what you need.
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Make a table to process these decisions. Process literally everything. What happens if you steal an unattended alliance goal? Where should you put it. How many effective points does it gain, how many seconds of your time does it take, and how many seconds of their time will it waste to try to undo. Stealing an opponents alliance goal and putting it on your ramp. Putting a goal under your platform for safekeeping (assuming you can retrieve it easily with a cooperative partner to press on the ramp).
Then identify the possible value of engaging in a 4 count pin at any point. What scenarios does that benefit you and which are not beneficial.
Look at opportunities that must be taken, like pressuring any unattended yellow goals, drawing SG3 violations, and learning how to cooperatively platform with varying amounts of goals, and in circumstances where you have skilled or unskilled alliance members.
If it takes you 5 seconds to do and wastes 8 seconds of their time, it is advantageous.
Use this table to study footage, and record your reflections in your engineering notebook.
Driver Training:
- Record your average time to plat with various loads. Then practice and record an updated one, then repeat next week.
- Drive to the far corner and grab a goal with your robot facing away from you. Did you grab it or did you miss? Record the percentage you successfully grab it and then practice to improve that time.
- Transfer a goal from your claw to your loader (assuming you have a meta setup). How much time did it take? Can you get it faster with practice?
- That thing that you couldn’t do well enough and it cost you a match… that thing. Can you do it more consistently or faster? Record your consistency, practice, and then record your updated consistency.
Show measurable gains in your Engineering Notebook.
Instead of practicing, you can try changing controls/coefficients, practicing, and regathering data. Some people find that their robots just handle poorly due to deadzones, tank vs arcade, button configuration, or not having limits (so that your lift doesn’t auto-stop at a desired height). You could even have your drive coach operate a second controller to turn on or off limits, adjust things, and basically make decisions for you while you focus on driving.
Again, measure results, and record them in your notebook.
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Tuning the controls to you in preference to training you to the control response is a good point. I used to play a lot of FPS online (Q2CTF anyone?) and getting the mouse response exactly right was crucial.
What type of drive code do you use?
Like a few points already made in this thread, practicing real matches with other competitive robots has proved invaluable for me. I lost my first competition because I hadn’t practiced under defense and what to do in situations involving other robots. I had just practiced skills. For the next week I ground driving matches with my sister teams, and ranked first by several ranking points at our next competition. So all in all, practicing real matches helps you with all the common situations, things you’re not good at, and moves you can do to help your chances of winning.
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i use left stick arcade with my arm on the other stick