We have used a tank drive every year. TOBOR II used the same drive (tank drive, no treads) as TOBOR V, so we actually used TOBOR II as somewhat of a prototype for TOBOR V. We got the drive up and running, then temporarily replaced TOBOR II's drill motors with this year's Chiphua motors to see how the drive would run, if it could pull what we needed, etc. It worked fairly well. We used TOBOR II (rather than III or IV) as a prototype because TOBOR IV had treads and TOBOR III had two wheels and two casters; both II and V use four wheels, tank drive, no treads. Getting TOBOR II running was pretty exciting and now we know the drives from TOBOR II, TOBOR III, TOBOR IV (and of course) TOBOR V work!
I guess we could practice with TOBOR II, if we wanted to... But while the drive works the same way, a lot of things are different (motors, etc.) so we haven't used TOBOR II to practice driving at all.
- Katie