[Chet Urata]

Pardon my ignorance, but can't you tell direction by how you are controlling the motors? Aside from determining if you are getting pushed in the wrong direction by another robot, what is the purpose of using the encoders for determining direction?

I was just informed of the fact (at least for our setup) that if you fully power motors for each side to make the robot go forward, that the motor for one side will be going running "forward" while the other will be going in reverse. I was told the motor going forward will run slightly faster than the one going in reverse meaning that the robot will tend to angle off of a straight path.

If what I was told is correct, using an encoder on each side (rather than two on one side) would allow you to determine if this is happening. Also, as mentioned elsewhere, this could replace dead reckoning.

c h e t !