ATA 4334 Practice Bot

[Adrian Clark]

My apologies for being so blunt, and as much as I hate to be the pessimist of this thread, I think your team is going about this all wrong.

A drivetrain, or any robot subsystem, on either an off-season project or on a competition robot should not be designed by one person. And if you do decide to go down the route of comparing multiple designs each designed by an individual the best way to decide between them would be to outline what qualities you want/don't want in your drivetrain and compare each one with a weighted design table.

I recommend that you outline what features and strengths you want your drivetrain to have as a team prior to any design. Then when it comes to the actual design, have design work done by experienced students who know what they're doing and can teach new members in the process. If your drivetrain is designed by someone who doesn't have a lot of experience then your safest approach is to stick to proven concepts and simple drivetrains, unlike your current designs. There's no shame in copying another teams drivetrain, as long as your copying something good. You're a pretty new team, you're not in a position where it would pay off to build some crazy drivetrain (from what I saw, the designs you're trying to decide between are pretty crazy), because the results probably wouldn't be as favorable as copying another teams simpler and proven drivetrain.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry if I come off as bashing you, just a little constructive criticism.
Best of luck for 2013!