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4WD is not all champaign and caviar...
If you do a lot of turning and you have 4 wheels in the corners of a square robot, you will have only a fraction of the turning torque you have with a single set of drive wheels with all you weight on those wheels (i.e. the CG of the machine is on the line between two wheels). This means you will have less torque to turn a goal for example.
More than this, you are going to pull more current and your motors are going to run hotter because a significant amount of energy is going to go into scrubbing your wheels accross the carpt.
This is not to say that 4WD is not worth it, but that this is something that goes onto the negative side of the balance sheet when considering 4WD vs. 2WD.
Complexity and weight and design freedom are other issues that are potential negatives, but these will have to wait for another day...
Joe J.
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