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Unread 09-01-2013, 09:06
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JamesCH95 JamesCH95 is offline
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AKA: JCH
FRC #0095 (The Grasshoppers)
Team Role: Engineer
 
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Re: Mecanum vs Treads

I would questions two things in your thought process.

First do you really think picking up frisbees will be worth compromising your drivetrain decision? It may be an okay strategy for qualifications, but if you're picking up non-trivial amounts of discs in eliminations it means either 1) your alliance partners are missing lots of shots (very bad, you probably can't make up for them) or 2) your opponents are missing lots of shots (in which case they aren't a very serious opponent anyway) or 3) it's the last 30s of the match, human players are throwing discs in, and you can reliably score more points by hanging than a last-minute grab and shoot of a few discs.

Second, if your robot is touching your pyramid you're more or less protected from being interfered with while shooting. Additionally, your robot can be aligned against the pyramid to help your aim.

In my mind you don't have a really strong argument for either mecanum wheels or treads. To pick between the two I would say treads would make your more effective at breaking past defensive robots, provided they could be fast enough to effectively traverse the field end-to-end (10-12ft/s I'd guess). However, I think a 6WD drivetrain would be at least as effective as treads.
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