[wireties]

Originally Posted by Squeakypig

I am good friends with one of the people on the design team of the hanging arm on 217. They informed me that the hanging arm put them overweight. However, they did redesign it to make it within weight, but that is when the comment you brought up came into effect. Either that or 148 and 217 just had different reasons for their decisions...or perhaps I was misinformed, who knows?

In any case, why did your team decide to go just mechanum? Too complicated or too heavy?

We had an octocanum drive in design stages but didn't like the technical risk, having not finished a prototype in the off-season. Plus, we do not see the clear traction disadvantages that others do. A mecanum will get pushed back if one is crazy enough to challenge a 6-wheeled beast head-on but that does not happen all that often. Quite often we just slide a little at the last minute, catch the defensive bot on its corner (while it is pivoting to get to us) and spin them around or we spin around them. Most of the time we just give a little head fake and go right around them, it is pretty funny to watch. These maneuvers steal time but pushing contests between powerful bots do not consume zero time. No doubt our experiences will be less true should we ever get anywhere near Einstein but thats a nice problem to have. Our bot can gather balls from all 4 sides and the key is a safe area, hopefully these factors make it harder to defend us -we'll see.

You bot looks awesome - good luck!