[Geek 2.0]

Originally Posted by Taylor

An important thing to consider here, and it speaks volumes about your team's personality, is the following: Is it an adult decision, a student decision, or a team decision?

Sorry, I really worded that wrong. I made it sound like I'm angry because the mentors won't let me do what I want to do. But that's not it. I just feel that if the mentors don't support it, it won't happen, no matter what. A few students honestly believe holonomic drive will work (that's not to say all though), but the mentors don't want to, and so there's no use in pushing for it because their word is law. You're VERY right, it should be a joint decision.

Originally Posted by StevenB

I hesitate to say you lose traction, because your wheels may still have the same grip on the carpet. But even if you lock your wheels, you only have a fraction of your "pushing resistance force". Unless you have a way to physically lock or articulate the rollers as describe in the paper I linked above, up to half of your traction is wasted on rollers that simply spin.

Take a square robot with one omniwheel (rollers perpendicular to the drive direction) on each side. To move forward, two wheels are doing the work, and two wheels are spinning their rollers and contributing nothing. The scenario is identical if we brake our wheels and another robot tries to push us. Two wheels will give us traction on the carpet, but the other two give us nothing.

If the robot moves diagonally, all four wheels move, but all of the rollers spin some. This results in a 1/(sqrt(2)) thing, which is where I get 71% power/traction.

Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. I still think the tradeoff is worth it though.