[Aur0r4]

Interestingly enough, we prototyped both 1 and 2 wheel shooters and got exactly the same error with both (about 0.4" for every foot of distance). However, the two wheeled design shot much farther, as would be expected. The advantage of a one wheel design is that it gives wickid backspin and we found that this gave a higher shot percentage (with the same overall shot error) because balls that hit the backboard tended to shoot down into the hoop.

Our team went with the one wheel design. We agreed, though, that either could be made to work. We also agreed that a catapult would be immune to the ball error, which I discussed our attempts to quantify in another thread (squishimetrics).

The most interesting test was last night when the local police brought a radar gun over to test our shot speed. After adding aluminum foil to reflect the radar, we found that our shots were coming out at about half of the theoretical value. We, therefore, need to really investigate the energy transfer efficiency at different speeds, and its likely not a linear relationship.