[Ken Leung]

It take quite a bit of motors to speed up your robot up to more than 15 ft/sec last year, because it will draw too much current using just 2 motors. You have to gear it high to get high speed, and with that you trade away torque, and stress your motors harder.

Even with the bigger circuit breaker this year, I will watch out for gearing the 2 drills into high speed. Anything more than 10 ft/sec is going to take away lots of torque, and without enough momentum you won't even get on top of the ramp. I predict a lot of teams are going to try gearing the motor really fast, and fail at getting up the ramp the first few try, especially the 1st year teams.

My suggestion is, test it out before you ship the robot. Get a good size ramp with the wire mess, and see if your robot can get on top without momentum. Because you won't get a head start to speed up your robot on flat ground every time.

For the more experienced team, I would try to build a 4 motor drive train for a fast robot, just so you will draw less current per motor, and have more torque over all. Output the 2 motor drive train while having the higher speed.

Yes, speed is important this year, even more so than last year, but be realistic about it. You won't be able to track the line at 20 ft per second and not get off track... And you won't be going anywhere when enemy robot is right in front of you pinning.

Transmission will be just as important this year too. Don't say you aren't warned.