M., this looks pretty cool, but I'd be interested in seeing your "simplified" design that you allude to for a couple of reasons.
First of all, any team that can make this could go above and beyond with a shifting transmission. I spot a four motor drive train, meaning they have to be precise enough to make the gearboxes and the gear train. Those wings are pretty massive, and would require a lot of patient machining on a sizeable mill. Making omniwheels like that would be some serious machining in and of itself. By looking at this design I think the "no high precision machining" advantage is moot.
I also take issue with the claimed curb-climbing capability. The front and rear omniwheels drop at the same time, which means you could get on the curb, but then what? It looks like the robot would high-center before it got the rest of it's frame over the curb. If you could show me a step-by-step demonstration of the process, I'd appreciate it.
My main concern is the limited amount of space for subsystems. Any large arms or grabbers would be impeded by the middle bar spanning the length of the chassis. I was also going to say that two pneumatic pistons are used to shift drive trains, but I guess that's a moot point because conventional trannies tend to use pistons anyway. A pneumatic question that persists, though, is what happens if a subsystem requires a pneumatic piston? Shifting speeds with massive two 7", 1.5" bore cylinders would drain the storage tanks pretty quickly.
One thing I do like, though, that you didn't mention is that in high gear (if the pistons are kept to a lower pressure) you almost seem to have an independent suspension, allowing individual wheels to bounce around a little bit and dampen any bumps in the road. This could be useful if FIRST decides to give us a few off-roady type environments (here's hoping, that'd be sweet
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I'm also working on a frame-changing transmission for this season. I'm not going to make it public before build season, though, because there's a good chance my team will use it. I'd like to get in touch with you and talk about it though
PS: I'm pretty good at Inventor (I worked as a draftsman over the summer for a bit, had some fun) but that's the only real solid modeler I've tried. How easy is it to switch between Inventor and SolidWorks?