[Levansic]

I don't understand all of the negative feelings about the Jaguars, vs. the Victors. The Jaguars are very adequate for a properly designed electromechanical system. If the jaguars are too "weak", then you're doing it wrong.

Seriously, we often loose sight of the forest from the trees. It is a natural tendency to grasp absolute numbers and attempt to achieve superlative performance. Because of this, many robots in FRC tend to be way under geared, chasing mythical top speeds that our calculations say we should hit. The results are sluggish robots that heat up their immediate surroundings and depleting batteries, motors, and motor controllers at an astounding rate.

Acceleration, not speed is what improves the drive performance. The field is not big enough for a bogged down robot to ever hit top speed. Double or tripple your gear ratio, and the power draw drops significantly. At the same time, your robot will get significantly faster and it will be far more responsive.

In the past, I have seen ~50% increases in gear ratio actually increase a good robot's top speed by ~30%, while improving battery life. Last year, we increased our gear ratio by 120%, and went from constant brown-outs and slow movement to a moderately fast robot that was quite maneuverable. We had other glitches, but the jaguars were not the problem.