[Madison]

We discussed early the need for maneuverability in the scoring zone. Because there are three unique game pieces and because there is incentive to score each type of piece in a particular location, we understood that this conveys significant advantages to defending robots. They'll know exactly where you're headed and might more effectively impede you from getting there. With the ability to strafe or otherwise maneuver easily within the scoring zone, it allows some flexibility in getting our robot into place in the zone while avoiding defense.

Given that, our options narrowed to mecanum or swerve drive. We didn't really consider using an omniwheel-based holonomic platform. Swerve is the clear favorite here and many students argued passionately for it. Unfortunately, I'm working with a much stricter budgeting/spending policy this season and purchasing two robots' worth of swerve gear was a bit too pricey. Additionally, since we have no prior experience with swerve, I was a bit concerned with developing the framework required to adequately support it.

Mecanum wheels then emerged as a plausible alternative. After a more careful examination of how we thought things will play out, we decided that we weren't ready to give up the benefits traction wheels had to offer, so we looked at combining the two. We called it Mecatank on the first day, but Paul Copioli mentioned Octacanum here on CD, so 488's Octacanum was born.

Personally, this may be the last FRC robot I ever build, so I'm pretty exciting about doing something a bit different than the status quo. I think the decision to use mecanum was a risk -- but so far we're really happy with our implementation and our programming team and its fancy field-oriented drive have made me a believer that, at the very least, it's going to be a fun robot to watch out on the field.