[Bob Steele]

I would highly encourage you to use the kitbot. You have an unprecedented opportunity to use a well-designed six wheel drive system. In the past teams have been only been given a 4 wheel drive system... which could be altered and made into a six but did require additional work..
You HAVE a solid six wheel drive system in your hands....you only have to order the sprockets to make it a six wheel system (and purchase more chain and links...)

You can customize it to get the speed you want by purchasing whatever cogs you want to use on your wheels if you think these are not the speed you want.

Try it out now... see if you can handle the speed.

By all means ... try to power all wheels on the floor... you will receive maximum traction this way, which leads to better acceleration.

When I started doing this we had no kitbot... we had no transmissions in the kit... our first bots weren't bad but could have been much better in this critical robot component.

By all means make your own if you want... but this is an opportunity you should not pass up.

Remember your resources are limited... time being the most critical...
spend your time and effort on programming, a way to move and place tubes, the minibot and its deployment... the use of sensors and automation.

In the off season, study other robots and what they do do for drive trains... or design your own from scratch... work out the kinks...

I don't think you will find many veterans that will tell you that this drive train couldn't be on Einstein in April.... indeed historically, something over 80% of all Einstein robots have been six wheel drives.
This % goes up if you don't count the first few years by the way... recently six wheel drives dominate.

They may not be the "sexy" drive train but they sure work!!

Good luck... We hope to see you in St. Louis!!