[GMitchell]

Well, there is a slight buzzing noise, but it sounds (to my uneducated ears) more like a motor trying to run without enough power being applied to actually make it go anywhere.

The 40A fuses don't seem to fix the problem completely, though subjective observation makes us believe that they improve the situation somewhat.

As to current draw and resetting, our multimeter seems determined not to measure anything other than voltage, and it only cooperates with that sporadically. We have checked the wiring repeatedly and none of us can see anything wrong.

As to the 'low battery' light, that springs on at 12V and stays on, regardless of whether there is any active power draw beyond the LEDs. If the robot is pinned in place, the indicators on the OI will drop to 9.x while the robot is still straining, and spring back up to 12.x whenever the robot is released.

As to wiring other motors into the system, that isn't quite feasible - we've got FIRST's gearboxes for the drill motors driving the wheels, and substituting other motors into the system would probably be more trouble than it would be worth for the purpose of gathering information.