I've seen these briefly mentioned in a few threads but there hasn't been much meaningful discussion on the use of a tristar (tri-star ?) wheel drivetrain. From what I can tell a few teams used them with great success back in 2004, but since then I don't think any have been used and details on those older robots are sparse. The concept would be similar to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzKo6KE2H5A
My team has created a CAD design for such a creature and now we need to decide if we're going to pull the trigger and use it as our drivetrain, or use a fallback N-wheel-drive skid steer option.
Attached is our CAD. As pictured it's about 25 lbs, so probably about 45 lbs once we get our CIMs and shifting gearboxes.
Thoughts?