Penalizing mecanum wheeled robots durring alliance selection.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by magnets

The fact that no mecanum wheeled robots on Einstein has occurred means any number of these 4 things.

1. Mecanum wheels somehow prevent teams from going to Einstein
2. Teams who chose mecanum wheels also do things that prevent them from going to Einstein
3. Teams who build robots who are capable of going to Einstein do not chose mecanum wheels
4. Einstein has gotten unlucky. This is unlikely, as we've seen an incredible number of robots on Einstein since mecanum wheels first entered FIRST, and none of them have mecanum wheels.

I will rewrite my statement with more disclaimers.

From events in a specific region that I have attended since 2011 and robot that I have seen on the field, I have seen that the majority of mecanum wheeled robots make other decisions that I do not agree with. On a world wide scale, I have yet to see more than one or two mecanum wheeled teams be very successful and claim it had to do with their mecanum wheels.

Also, in the year that mecanum was most useful (IMO, 2011), 254 won with a simple 6WD, proving that you don't need mecanum. In fact, every single Einstein match ever proves that you don't need mecanum to be a very successful team. Personally, I prefer to work with a team that realizes that something like mecanum drive is not something needed to be the very best and spent more time on other parts of their robot.

This is an opinion, and only applies to robots that have only mecanum wheels on drive.

My one defense for mecanum is, when done right, they can be extremely intuitive to drive. Our 2011 robot that made it into the Curie elimination rounds was an extremely easy robot to drive, and I believe that help us succeed that year.

With that said, we have not used mecanum since, including *winning* Galileo this season.