Best wheels for football field?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by SJaladi

While I've never actually driven a T-Shirt Cannon robot on a Football field, my past experience with pneumatic wheels vs. other common FRC wheels tells me that pneumatic wheels are probably the way to go for driving on turf/grass. The one thing you will want to watch out for though is that if your center drop (I'm assuming you're running at least 6 wheels, in the standard tank configuration) is too small then the deformation of the pneumatic wheels under the weight of the robot will cause all the wheels to touch the ground and cause increased turning scrub. Therefore you may have to play around with finding the right pressure to inflate the wheels to and the right amount of center drop.

It is possible to vary the pressure by individual wheel to exaggerate the drop, too.

Incidentally, some 6" McMaster pneumatic casters with custom hubs could be used--I haven't seen them much lately on FRC fields, but there are some that were routinely modified to be run in an FRC drivetrain. If you have some machining options available, you might find that to be a good way to go, as you can swap in your current wheels if you aren't running on the football field.