Best Drivetrain

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by EricH

Not that I know of, however, it could be done given enough motors. I think the reason is, not enough decent motors. You need 2 per wheel, and that means 8 motors. Yeah, we have that many. No, they aren't all what we'd want for that. We'd need 4 CIMs, 2 FPs, and 2 globes. Not enough decent motors left to put much on top of the drive, unless pneumatics are used for an arm. (Banebots, window, and maybe van door are left.)

This comment got me thinking...
There's already been an idea posted to implement a ball drive in a similar fashion to a crab, but there are boundless other motor possibilities.
Once I have some free time I might try and run some vector calculations and see what I can come up with. Even toying around with the idea in my head I can think of a couple relatively simple ways to control the drive with 4 (or fewer) motors, in a very similar fashion to a holonomic system. The question then becomes to you gain any advantages over a holonomic system, and that's where I'd need to run a few calculations to see if this configuration could allow for any new types of movement (my suspicion is no), or more efficient movements in any direction.