I’m thinking of roles for my team this upcoming season and we need someone to drive. I’ve heard that its a good idea for the driver to be the coder, but I’ve also seen teams where one member’s sole purpose is to drive the robot. Whats the situation on your team?
Your driver should be whoever is the best at driving, simple as that. If thats the only thing they do, or if they also build and code, you want your strongest driver to drive.
Of course, being a builder or coder might help in being good at driving since that person is familiar with those aspects of the robot, but that doesn’t instantly classify them as the best at driving
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I personally think that it is best for the driver to have at least some driving and programming experience. That way, they can ask other builders and programmers to make specific changes.
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I’d say coder is probably the best, as they can easily alter the robots handling through programming. Also helps you remember what your controls actually are
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For my team having the driver be the programmer meant he could easily program macros, because he was able to understand, as a driver, what parts of the robot he wanted to automate. This also made bringing home the robot for testing easier on his part.
The obvious downside, is that if your driver/programmer cannot make an event, you are now down a programmer and a driver (as opposed to just a driver or a programmer).
I would not advise pushing someone to be a driver just so that you can consolidate; instead, the driver should be the person on your team who is the most passionate about driving and who has the most talent.
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my problem is, everyone that will be on my team next year has zero driving experience from previous years, either because they are rookies to vex or just didnt drive in previous years. so we’re trying decide who should drive for this coming season. since its summer, the driver would have this time to practice until school starts.
Just get everyone to get some practice time in. Then run skills with something playing full blast in the background for some simulation purposes. This will test their ability to handle pressure. Whoever drives best is the driver.
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I would suggest holding driver tryouts. Some members might not have an interest and it will allow y’all to find the team member with the best driving skills.
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On my team only one person really wants to be the driver, de we let them do it.
IMO the driver should be the teammate which can and will practice the most, not necessarily the one who comes in with the best rookie driving.
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Make the driver whoever has the right balance of being good at it and also enjoys it the most/is dedicated. They don’t need to be a programmer/builder, just someone who is present while the bot is being built so they are involved in the design/know what’s going on.
As someone who does programming but doesn’t drive, I can tell you that we’ve had little to no hiccups due to the driver not being able to program his own macros/change his bindings. All it takes is a text, not that hard
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I would say that a team member that is involved in most of the building or programming would have a better advantage as the driver. He/she acknowledges the capabilities of the robot that way.
For example, a team might have a crappy intake, and one that participates in the building would try not to ram the intakes into the perimeter or other robots.
A member passionate about vex enough that he/she watch competition clips from other competitions also would be a good candidate of the driver. If he/she watched a lot of matches from competitive events, he/she would pick up a variety of tricks or techniques, such as how to escape defense from situations specific to the game itself, that can be implemented in match play.
We had a driver that is neither involving in a lot of the makings of our robot or watch competitive matches. Despite countless hours of driving, he was still- I would say- not particularly good.
EDIT: grammar
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The driver should be the person who is best at driving the robot, and can dedicate the time.
If you have the builder being the driver, they will have an inherent sense of how the robot works, but that is easily acquired over time. If you have the programmer being the driver, they understand their program, but you can also acquire that.
So much of driver skill is dependent on time spent practicing. Find someone who will be committed, and then go off of who drives the best right off the bat.
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In my personal opinion, your driver should the the most dedicated/ most available person on your team.
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My team works differently, we line up who thinks they have best driving, and we just do a competiotn, like a cone course, avoiding this and that, and how efficiently they can get to point a to point b while completing tasks, personally on my team I am the dedicated driver, but im also the coder, and I do a lot of build. my personal opinion is before dismantling previous years robots pick the best robot, and do the little competition, because being the driver, being able to code the robot and design and build the robot a little more around what i say are personal preferences, is really nice. TLDR; figure out who drives best, and design new robot after
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Large majority of the drivers I’ve known have also been the main builder. The main benefits I’ve noticed are:
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Better understanding of the robot, and how strong or weak it is. This is also important if the robot starts malfunctioning during a match
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Time spent testing mechanisms counts as driver practice to a degree
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Much more likely to be dedicated to showing up to driver practice, as they’ve already put in so much work up to that point
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This is assuming that the person who practices the most surpasses the rookie driver in skill in a certain timeframe. I Definitely agree that teams should evaluate potential growth from practice when deciding on a driver and open to switching if one driver is not performing and they should be given the amount of practice time that they receive.
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I would say whoever is best at driving(preferably not the coder). For our club when the season gets going the driver sometimes does 4 hours of driving practice per day and the coder does 6-7. Although I(the coder) have done 11 hour practices for as much as a week at a time, I would not suggest it in the long run.
my driver is @dchoi77
My driver is @Grayson_MemeLord
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