Multi-Motor/Transmission justification

[Gui Cavalcanti]

I've been watching the pictures and hearing the talk on Chief Delphi for the past several weeks, and often I've come across a picture of a 4-motor or 6-motor drivetrain, with a shifting transmission of 2 or 3 gears. Out of curiosity, what is your justification for this?

The way I see it, the field's tiny this year. There's not a lot of room to move around in. If you're a hanging bot, your drivetrain won't be in use for some of the match. If you're a ball-herding bot, all you need are brakes to stay in front of a ball chute while you do your thing. If you're a big ball bot, do you really want to be moving fast while a big ball is 7 feet in the air?

On top of that, many motors means more juice gets sucked out of the battery quicker. I know our robot starts to have trouble maneuvering when the compressor, arm, and drive are all going at the same time, and that's only 4 motors. I can't imagine what a 4-motor or 6-motor drive would suck down in addition to moving arms and other mechanisms.

I can see teams spending all summer on a shifting transmission or a multi-motor shifting transmission, and just dying to put it in when the season starts. Or maybe a team has a proven design that they use from year to year. Or maybe a team wants to go for a design award with their drivetrain. I just can't see a justification for such designs in this year's game. I know we couldn't justify it, we wanted the most powerful motors in the kit in places other than just the drivetrain. That and, as usual, we're on a razor-sharp edge when it comes to weight

So, what's your justification?