Mecanum or 6WD

[evoluti1]

In the end, our team is going with 6WD. The choice came down to this: A 6WD has two advantages over mecanum:

It is faster. We used mecanum in 2010, and noticed that as we accelerated, we lost power from the slipping of the rollers; however, to me, this didn't seem like a significant loss.

Secondly, it gets better traction. (I was talking with someone from 330 at one of the regionals, and they had put a mecanum drive bot in a pushing match with the 6WD. Mecanum lost consistently, even with the same gearing).

The Mecanum Drive has one advantage: its ability to drive sideways.

Here's the rub: Driving sideways would be a solution to the problem of scoring accurately, reliably and quickly. We could also solve that problem by having the driver practice with the alternative drive option. We decided on 6WD, and our plan is to give him weeks of practice on tank after ship and before regionals with the kit bot.