[sanddrag]

We just use two sticks and drive it like a tank because it is built like a tank. I am strongly opposed to a one stick drive for anything that is built like a tank. It would be more suited to an omnidirectional robot.

As far as a steering wheel goes, when I first saw 22 and 254 using a wheel to drive their tank-like machines, I thought they had gone out of their minds. But then I watched how effective 254 was in game play easily maneuvering around obstacles even while driving in reverse.

Then at the JPL open house this past weekend, we got to do a few very high speed runs (in reverse too) with ours and we found that it is not all that easy easy to keep it straight and maneuver around obstacles while going at that kind of speed (14fps) by controlling it with two joysticks.

So now I'm beginning to think a wheel might be worthwhile to try. It seems like it would allow for very smooth arced driving lines if desired.

The key to it's success though is getting feedback from the shaft encoders on the robot.