Another chapter to the 6WD vs. Mecanum debate

[Dale]

Every fall I do the drive train presentation at FIRSTFare, our FRC technical conference in Portland. I go through all of the teams who were either division winners or finalists at the championships and try to determine what basic system they used for their drive train. Obviously the game has a lot to do with what works but here are the results from 2008 and 2010:

2008 Championship Division Winners and Finalists
14 Six Wheel with traction wheels all around
2 Six Wheel with omnis
2 Four wheel with omnis
2 Mecanum
2 Crab Drive
1 Four wheel rack and pinion.

2010 Championship Division Winners and Finalists
2 Four Wheel
5 Six Wheel
10 Eight Wheel
2 Nine Wheel (148, 217 partnership)
1 Mecanum
3 Crab Drive
1 Treads

I left out 2009, the Lunacy year, because there the drive train was more or less determined by FIRST. I might have gotten a few of these wrong because I'm just going by what I can observe from the team's website and Blue Alliance video.

What you can see is that very few Mecanum drives make it to the top levels of competition. How much of that is because many of these elite teams have a drive base they've developed over the years that they are happy with and how much of it is because Mecanum doesn't readily translate into a competitive advantage FOR THOSE GAMES is something we won't know. This might well be the year that Mecanum breaks out...or not.