[AmoryG]

Well, with a ball drive system it would be kind of like having crab drive. I imagine it to be slightly better than crab drive. I know this can't be proven until an effective ball drive robot is made (only balls are used to drive the robot), but I suspect that since rolling a ball in any direction seems kind of more "natural" for a ball to do while rotating wheels around to drive in another direction doesn't seem so much so it sounds to me it's possible ball drive could potential perform better than crab drive. Like I said I can't prove this, but it's worth putting it to the test in my opinion. You can't stop trying to look for other ways to do things, or that really defeats the whole purpose of inovation.