pic: We got bored :)

[Greg Needel]

I love this. The FIRST community never ceases to amaze me with their ideas which I probably would never have thought of, this idea is one of them. I can totally picture this on an FRC robot, tucked away inside a 3x3 or 4x4 frame rail. It could be an almost "hidden" drive train as it would take up a very small amount of real estate.

As for the wheels, I have heard mixed reviews about the banebot wheels. Just like any traction devices harder wheels don't provide enough traction and the soft wheels wear too quickly. A unique opportunity you have with a 3 wheel design is a mixture of wheel durometer, while I am not sure you may be able to "tune" your traction using different combinations, the one that strikes me as obvious is high traction on the inside and harder wheels on the outside.

A couple of questions:

Any reason you didn't use gears or even #25 on the outside, I would suspect you could play with the geometry a bit and make gears work making assembly even easier.

Do you think you really need ball bearings in the modules? I think you could get away with oilite bronze bushings to keep the space and weight lower.

Did you think about drilling out the hex shafts to reduce weight? you could probably sink a 1/4 hole through your shafts and loose even more weight.

Overall I really like the idea, and don't be surprised if I borrow some of these ideas for a future robot.