Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Ross
Although the holonomic drive train is fun to drive and fun to build, I would NOT recommend it. The skunkworks guys should know as well as anyone how physical this game can be, i saw some of the contact they picked up in Vegas.
Many students and even mentors will say "if you are really maneuverable, you won't get hit". Thats true, but if you don't have any room to maneuver in, you will still get hit, pushed, escorted across the field, or whatever you like to call it.
My senior year, we (FRC 830) had a holonomic base. It was well built, but...
We got pushed a lot. Some of you gamers might even say we got PWN3D!!!11!!
Holonomic is a great drive system, but please carefully weigh your options.
An idea, though, would be to add a bit more support underneath. There is a lot of bowing that can occur if you aren't careful.
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Thanks for your great comments... You are correct of course... any drive system with omniwheels on all of the corners does not give a great deal of pushing power...we will lose some efficiency due to the configuration.
When the game is released we are going to weigh our options and see if the drive train is something we want to use in competition.
The game dictates the drive train. After one has been around FIRST for awhile on realizes that the game dictates everything... which is pretty much true to a real life situation..
A big mistake that some teams make is wanting to do something because it is "cool". Although there is nothing in the rules against cool... and many super cool things are done for the game, simply using a drive system that worked before or one that is neat to design and operate are not good sound engineering decisions by themselves.
Forcing the design of the robot to work in the game is much more difficult than trying to figure out the best design for the game.
Our engineering challenge in FIRST is to come up with a machine that will best aid our alliance partners in accomplishing the task at hand. This may put us in a situation of designing a robot that isn't the drive train or the end effector that we would like or even as complex as we could design.
The constraints of the game and the resources available dictate the design.
I applaud teams for taking on design challenges in the off season and NOT using them in the game. Team 488 last year had a beautiful mecanum drive train that had been designed in the off season.. it was super cool.
They didn't use it last year.... I believe the main reason was that it didn't really fit into what they needed the robot to do. They ended up with a GREAT robot and we were lucky enough to be on the field with them as a partner during seeding rounds.
This is what the design process is about... we continue to learn....
learning is good.... challenges are good.... as Woodie says...
Humans like really tough challenges.... it brings out the best in us...
Enough for now... I love FIRST for what it does for all of us...
challenging us... making us make tough decisions.... and most of all
working with the other teams off season and during the season...
thanks for your comments
p.s. We are working on a way that we could use this design so that another robot could not push us effectively... more on that later....
perhaps much later....