[Paul Copioli]

All,

All of the drive systems mentioned have been successfully implemented by a wide range of FRC teams, but the only thing that matters is what your team can implement given all of your specific team constraints and talents.

We had a pretty decent debate between traditional swerve (think 111 or 71), mecanum, Nonadrive (148 & 217), Octocanum (I know someone will do it this year), and 6WD skid. To understand our final decision, here is some history of team 217:

2000 - 2WD using 2 drill motors no shifting
2001 - Started as 6WD using drill motors ended up 4WD no shifting
2002 - 4WD swerve with a CVT we called the Crazy Chicken Transmission using 2 CIMS, 2 drill motors, and 2 FP motors.
2003 - 4WD Forklift drive (2 rear wheels were swerve) pneumatic shifter with 2 CIMS and 2 drill motors
2004 - 6WD skid steer with shifting using 2 CIMs and 2 Drill motors
2005 - 6WD skid steer no shifting using 4 CIMs* and 2 FP.
*NOTE: 2005 was the first year of the kitbot as we know it and the first year of 4 CIMs in the kit. The drill motors were retired from the kit.
2006 - 6WD skid no shifting using 4 CIM motors
2007 - 6WD skid no shifting using 4 CIM motors
2008 - 6WD skid using 4 CIM motors with shifting
2009 - 6WD skid using 2 CIM motors no shifting
2010 - Nonadrive using 5 CIM motors no shifting

This year we have decided to use 6WD skid once again. Given all of our constraints we want to put our innovation into other parts of the robot(s). I can see arguments for the other drive systems, but for us we are going with 6WD this year.

Paul