Six or four wheels

[landon2345]

Our team has been discussing this recently. At the moment we are considering a 4-wheel tank drive but may move to six. After looking over threads on this site I think that it may not make much of a difference. Friction is dependent upon force so putting more wheels divides the amount of force exerted by the robot due to gravity by the number of wheels. However, is there a difference between friction and traction? One of my teammates mentioned "dually?" trucks (pickups with four wheels on the back axle - two on each side). He was talking about how the increase in traction allowed it to pull more weight whereas a pickup with the same engine and only 2 wheels on the back axle would have its tires slip and would not be able to pull a heavy load.

Please note. I am still a noob.

Help? Any thoughts?