Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

No joke... that's why we did it. We thought it would offer benefits in "the last tube game" and it did offer some benefits, but at far too high a price.

Where it really paid off was in the experience the team got, and the amazing videos and machine that we were left with afterwards.

Four years later and the wheels are still really cool.

Jason

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

If you want manueverablity with good wieght ditributation i would recommend 6 wheels with either tank drive or skid steer::ouch::

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

Driver practice has a lot to do with how "maneuverable" either drive platform really is. Getting something put together NOW and on carpet and connected to a working control system might turn out to be a reasonable priority.

Also...designing this year's chassis based on last year's game might not be the best thing to do. Last year was really weird, this year things are back to normal--the kit chassis is plenty strong for a flat playing field.

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

Nowhere in the OP was "mecanum" mentioned. I believe the question is 4wd tank vs 6wd drive tank. I'd go with 6wd tank as it comes well packaged in the KOP c-base. If you decide to go 4wd have two of the wheels be slick or omni wheels, so that your robot can actually turn.

Good luck!

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

in all reality both of these have strengths and weaknesses however the way you go about your design ie: tank, omni, mecanum, swerve, crab will really determin which set up along with what you want it to ba able to do ie: manuvure, agility, strength, pusshing power, etc etc etc however it seems alot of teams have had success with a 6 wheel drive using 4 mecanum and 2 sticky wheels however its all up to how u want your robot to perform

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

Surely you mean omni wheels? I've never seen a 6wd robot with 2 traction wheels and 4 mecanum, nor have I ever heard of one.

I may sound picky, but there is a big difference between a mecanum wheel and an omni wheel.

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

One of our Mentors, Clem McKown, created a PowerPoint in regards to drive trains models and it may help you with which drive train to choose.

http://wiki.team1640.com/images/b/b0/Drive_Lesson_3.pdf

Re: 4 vs 6 wheels (what to choose)
 

A huge part of picking a drive train is what you want it to do and how you plan to build around it. Last year we wanted to build a goalie-bot. We decided quickly that we wanted to have the robot oriented so that we could block with the wide side. We then decided that a wide kicker would be a good idea. For this design mecanum was a just. we wanted to be able to drive really fast between the two goals but also strafe forward and backwards in order to drive up to the ball in order to kick.

For this year if you are confident that your programmers will be able to write line tracking code that will get you in position to score maybe you go with a 6 wheel rocker.

If you think you will end up manually positioning the bot to score then you have a bit more to think about. On one hand you can spin a 6 wheel rocker to make adjustments (to a certain point) while mecanum will easily strafe to do the same thing.

There isn't really any way to say which one is better. It depends on what you are trying to do and how you are trying to do it. Thats what makes this engineering.

~DK