[Will Hanashiro]

3 years ago in the zone zeal competition, 322 initially used a tread design. during our first regional (GLR) we soon discovered many problems with our design, including: treads falling off the wheels during tug o war matches and high speed turns, and huge amounts of stretching. whenever the treads fell off (which was often), we were left immobile. we ended up finishing this regional close to last.

at our next regional, all we did was take the same tread material and wrapped it around each individual wheel (as PAUL suggested earlier), and had tremendous success. as a result, we were actually picking for the finals (which we eventually made).

now i don't know the proper calculations for calculating traction for this situation, but we were able to find out the pushing power of both bots the old fashioned way. we simply put a heavy duty bathroom scale against a wall and pushed against it with our robots. i don't remember the actual pushing power of the robots, but i do remember that the 4 wheel design pushed just about the same amount as the treaded design (and this was with the same exact transmission, just different ways of contacting the carpet).

BOTTOM LINE: even though 322 hasn't gone back to a treaded robot since zone zeal... STICK WITH WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!!! IF TREADED BOTS WORK FOR YOU... stick with it! IF 6 WHEEL BOTS WORK FOR YOU... stick with it! IF 4 WHEEL BOTS WORK FOR YOU...stick with it! just improve upon what works for you from season to season, and surely you'll have a competitive robot at the end of the six weeks!!!!