Live operations

10Retrieve driver

The Driver tab: sharing your position with the organizers, the pilots they assign you, navigating to them, and confirming a pickup.

Needs internet

Who gets the tab#

The Driver tab appears only for staff the organizer has marked as a retrieve driver on the selected competition. It carries a green dot while you are sharing your position. If it is not there, see Roles and access.

Share my live position#

The switch at the top of the tab is the whole feature: Share my live position. With it on, your car appears on the organizer's live map inside today's task, next to the pilots, so they can assign you the ones nearest to you.

The first time you turn it on, the app explains why it needs your location before the system asks, and only then shows the system prompt. The line under the switch then reports what the sharing is doing:

Waiting for GPS fix...
Sharing is on, but the phone has not produced a position yet. Normal for the first few seconds, and longer in a garage or a deep valley.
Sharing your live position
Positions are flowing and the last upload succeeded. This is the state you want.
Connection problem
Positions are still being collected, but the last upload failed. The app retries by itself, waiting longer between attempts, and nothing is lost in the meantime.

Positions are collected continuously and sent in small batches roughly every ten seconds, so the upload survives a few dead kilometers of road without gaps in your track.

Fig. 10.1Sharing off, and refusing to start: without a task published for today there is nothing to attach your position to, so the switch stays off and the app says so.

Caution

Sharing attaches your position to today's live task, so it cannot start before the organizer has published one. Until then, turning the switch on answers No live task published for today. and leaves it off. Try again once the task is out.

Note

Sharing continues while the app is in the background, which is what you want in a car. On Android an ongoing notification keeps it alive and is the visible sign that it is running. Do not swipe the app away while you are driving retrieve.

When the phone says no#

Location permission denied. Position sharing stays off.
You declined the prompt. Turn the switch on again and accept it.
Location permission is blocked. Enable it in the system settings to share your position.
The permission was refused permanently, so the app cannot ask again. Open settings takes you to the right page.
Location services are turned off. Enable them in the system settings to share your position.
Location is off for the whole phone, not just this app. Open settings opens the system location settings.

Note

The app only asks for location while you are using it. It does not need the always allow permission: staying alive in the background is handled by the notification on Android and by the location background mode on iOS.

Pilots to pick up#

Under the switch, Pilots to pick up lists the pilots that have been assigned to you today, newest first. Until somebody assigns you one, it reads No pilots assigned to you yet. Pickups appear here as soon as the organizers assign them to you.

Assignments are made by the ops room, either from the Live Ops feed in this same app or on the competition website. You do not claim pickups yourself, and the list can change while you drive: a job handed to another driver disappears from your list, and one handed to you appears on it.

Each card gives you:

  • the pilot's photo and name, and the time they were assigned to you,
  • a blue distance badge with how far they are from your current position, in meters under a kilometer and in kilometers above, which only appears while you are sharing your position,
  • their landing coordinates and altitude,
  • the note they sent with their retrieve request, when there is one,
  • and the Navigate and Pilot picked up buttons.

The list refreshes by itself roughly every twenty seconds while the tab is open, and you can pull down or use the refresh button at any time.

Fig. 10.2An assigned pickup: the pilot, when they were assigned, where they landed, and the two things you can do about it. There is no distance badge here because sharing is off.

Caution

The list is per competition. If you switch competition, sharing stops and the list is cleared, because both belong to the competition you left.

Confirming a pickup#

When the pilot is in the car, tap Pilot picked up and confirm. Two things then happen: the pilot leaves your list, and the ops room sees Picked up by ... with the time on the pilot's retrieve message.

Fig. 10.4The confirmation names the pilot, because this is the point of no return.

Caution

This cannot be undone from the app. Confirm it when the pilot is actually with you, not when you set off. If you confirm the wrong one, tell the organizer, because only they can correct it on the website.

Keep sharing your position after a pickup. The organizers use it to route you to the next pilot, and they can only do that if they know where you are.

Practicalities of a retrieve day#

  • Plug the phone in. Continuous GPS and a data connection will empty a battery in a few hours.
  • Turn sharing on when you leave, not when the first pickup arrives. The organizers assign by distance, and you can only be assigned if they can see you.
  • Poor coverage is fine. Positions are buffered and sent when the signal returns.
  • Turn sharing off when you are done for the day. There is no reason for the app to keep reporting your position on the drive home.