[SamM]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Isn't the rate of "linear" motion related to the rate of rotation in this design? So wouldn't slowing down that rotation, in turn, slow down how quickly you "move" around the field?

I also question the safety of this design on the FRC scale. Even if you keep the design relatively compact (say 18"x18" without bumpers) and rotate at the bottom end of your suggested range (120rpm), the outside corners of your bumpers are already moving faster than 1000 ft/second. Much worse are the hard corners of your frame (which are traveling 800 ft/second). There's a reason that videos like this one give warnings about "melty-bots" being able to kill you if they're out of control. There's a reason why these types of robots are mostly seen in robot fighting, because their very functionality relies on large amount of kinetic energy.

Though your numbers are off by an order of magnitude or two, you are right in theory. It would be much faster to just turn a tank robot and drive in the desired direction than it would be to wait for the robot to "drift" in that direction.

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Our team has a running joke of inventing "mecanum treads".

There's actually a robot with these in one of the labs here at the University of South Florida. I believe a master's student designed it for his thesis a few years back. I'll see if I can get a picture next time I'm there.