pic: AndyMark Mecanum Wheels

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

Truthfully, we're not building this to impress the jaded folks of the FIRST world. We see this as a potentially beneficial platform upon which to design robots as well as a fascinating, interesting demonstration robot that'll be able to engage people by immediately making them ask, "How did you do that?" Because we saved some time by buying this wheels from AndyMark, the notion of an omnidirectional platform is no less 'cool' to 95% of the people who're going to see it run.

I'll back that point up as well, we're ordering a set just to give us the challenge of actually programming them and getting them to work. Whether it'll be on our 2007 robot or not is not what we're considering right now, and frankly without knowing the game, it would be silly to try and decide that now anyways. Our first plan is to install them onto our cannon robot to demonstrate at football games or similar events. The way our cannon bot is designed, the bulk of the chassis and wheels is hidden from view, so we're expecting for some jaws to drop when it drives like we hope it will.