Issues with Drivebase

[Dunngeon]

Originally Posted by daliberator

To what extent are you referring? I was commenting on what I read as a rather broad statement about the game in general. I agree with MrForbes and String that a drop-center chassis is a viable option that may be worth re-considering, and was merely concurring with String that dual omnis on a 4-wheel drivebase may make the robot unnecessarily more difficult to drive.

I edited my post above to make it clear what I'm referring to. If precision is required when moving game pieces to the scoring platform (or anywhere in RR), then in my opnion you have failed somewhere in your design process. Game piece control and acquisition should have been a high weight on weighted objective tables this year (as it is most years).

We failed at that this year, but fixed it by our second event. There is no point in our cycle where high levels of precision are required, we just need to be in the general area. Nearly all robots that score 2 or more stacks a match have the same trait.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

To verify my understanding before I do an analysis - are you advising four wheels, with traction wheels on one diagonal and omnis on the other diagonal?

Yep. It's been used before, it worked as intended, and it picked up at least one award (can't remember which one offhand, but it was in the 2006 Behind the Design book).

[daliberator]

Originally Posted by Dunngeon

I edited my post above to make it clear what I'm referring to. If precision is required when moving game pieces to the scoring platform (or anywhere in RR), then in my opinion you have failed somewhere in your design process. Game piece control and acquisition should have been a high weight on weighted objective tables this year (as it is most years).

I think we're on the same page. Like you said, the successful teams are the ones who can be imprecise and fast during their cycles and still put up lots of points. Those who didn't consider game piece control very important are having trouble finding a middle ground between speed and reliability. That's what I was getting at with my initial post: the best robots can run cycles as fast as possible because their bots are inherently precise and reliable.

[runneals]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

If you only replace one pair, replace the one with less weight (away from the center of gravity). For most robots this year with a convex rectangular base, this would be the rear wheels. We used this configuration for Ultimate Ascent, and we had the two solid wheels in the front and two (idle) omni wheels in the rear.

We started out with all omnis, but it totally fish tailed. We ended up doing the same thing in 2013 too, although it was 2 omnis on front and 2 rubber wheels on the back (with our butterfly drive). I would definitely recommend using a pair of omnis and a pair of rubber.