[Kingofl337]

Team 40 has tried most of the drive combinations mentioned here over the last few years.

2005 - 6wd Solid Center, front/rear omnis
Robot was good a could maneuver well, be wasn't very repeatable in in autonomous. Our implementation caused the robot to rock on the center wheel. I was also difficult to drive, the robot wouldn't drive strait to save it's life.

2006 - Mecanum w/3 Speed Dewalts
Robot could go in any direction, the drivers did seem to complain about difficulty driving it. It worked great for auto tracking and shooting in autonomous. On the other hand the robot had zero pushing power, and could be easily knocked off coarse in auto or shoved in a corner during operator control. It would take a lot of convincing for us to go back to this drive train.

2007 - 6wd Drop center, 2 speed servo shift by AndyMark
The robot drove well, it was easy to program, and we used a turret in place of maneuverability. While the turret was nice, we missed the ease of navigation. Also it rocked on the center wheel which would cause the drivers to readjust the tube.

2008 - 4wd Swerve, Motors In Pods, Pods Grouped F/R for Steering
Based on the 2008 Control System, this was extremely difficult to program and still have enough compute power to control all the other devices. Autonomous was very easy to program with "robocoach" and allowed the robot to strafe at will. Driving the robot was like driving car and was extremely natural, and through software the robot could enter crab mode and strafe in any direction. Other then a few broken POTS this drive was extremely reliable. We are definitely sold on this drive system, if we have 6 motors to dedicate to the cause.

2009 - 3wd Crab Drive
We liked the swerve so much in 2008 we did it again in 2009. Though we ran out of motors and space so we did a tri-cycle drive and linked the steering together and used a single motor to steer instead of two. Programming in the 2009 system with C++ was very simple with the included PID functions. With the surface being so slick the robot could still rotate through software tricks. This allowed us to have a extremely successful autonomous. The drivers did struggle a bit more this year, as driving directionally and slow rotation caused some issues.