Effectiveness of Casters

[Spikey]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

Spikey, I'm impressed that you won 2 regionals with casters, but I'm betting it's not because of the casters right? You just focused your resources on other parts of the robot rather than on the drive system, so you had a robot that played all aspects of the game and didn't just drive.

The question of this thread is, what do you think of casters. My answer - not much.

Our robot that year was very fast and maneuverable, we could fly across to the other side of the playing field and steal our opponents black ball, then quickly collect our own giving us a huge advantage. Also we had a very effective scissor jack to deposit balls, and to hang on the bar. Casters actually ended up as a last resort for our team because our 4 wheel drive destroyed the carpet, after we slapped the casters on we went from being dead last to winning two regionals. However this year will not be a good year for casters because they do not do well at all on the polycarbonate(u need traction on there) and the difficulty they add when you have to climb stairs(getting caught on them). This year is a bad year for casters.