Transmission Design Help

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by Stonefan5271138

You'll have a greater sideload so it may wear your wheels down a bit more when turning, but that also means that you have a lot of sideload traction that will help you stay planted so teams will have a harder time trying to push you from the side. Say, if have two robots with the exact same transmissions, but one has 1" wide wheels and the other has 2" wide wheels, the one with 2" wide wheels will be a lot harder and sometimes impossible to push sideways, while the robot with 1" wide wheels, you can actually push around. So I would say that width this year plays an important role. If you can shoot and not get pushed around so easily, from any angle, you would be a force to be reckoned with. That's just what we noticed this year going with the 2" wide wheels.

But then your robot has to overcome that resistance to turn, causing the jerky, flexy bam-bam-bam driving we all hate. The ideal is finding a middle ground. Pop casters are a good solution, six wheel drive have great foward traction, but at the expense of "plantability." The required characteristics depend on the game. This year six wheel drives seem to be the class of the field. (barring swerve drives, since they are in such small numbers) It is just like speed/torque, you sacrifice turning for planting, but could get around that through trickery like swerve drives and mecanum, whose parrallel in transmissions would be the shifter/CVT. Personally, I love the driveability of a 50/50 or 55/45 TW/WB (trackwidth/wheelbase) four wheel drive design, or a six wheel drive if that is not practical.