[Greg McKaskle]

To answer the original question in more detail, the watchdog isn't depricated, but it isn't used by default. The Safety config isn't required, but it is on by default for the drive base. You are free to turn if off once you trust that a badly behaved loop won't force you to disable or estop the robot in panic. You can increase the timeout, as just discussed. You can also time your code to see how often you are actually updating the motors and determine if that is what you deem reasonable. Perhaps you need to speed things up or break things up.

Greg McKaskle