Crazy Drive Train Ideas

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by JesseK

To sum up the critics of this thread:
"An innovation needs to be set to a strategy, solve a specific problem and be practical before the design even starts."

An idea need not solve a specific problem but a design should. That problem can be completely off the wall or it can be realistic. A water game, not so realistic for FRC but figuring out how to navigate under water would be useful for NURC.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at this, either you can define a problem and develop a solution or you could define a solution and develop a problem. Personally, I prefer knowing my problem first as it means I can more easily break it down into sub problems to be solved.

As for crazy drive trains, why not do a definitive test 14 wheel drive (703) compared to 6wd or 8wd or 2wd? It might be that having more wheels has benefits that we can't see easily.

As far as problems you might want to look into solving I would suggest climbing stairs (6" or more) or navigating on a narrow area (see 2004 field centerpiece for example). These are challenges a lot of FRC teams have never faced and none of the students still on teams have faced.