Mecanum Einstein this year

[Hawiian Cadder]

i doubt we will see a purely mechanum drive on Einstein, ever. team with the maximum amount of experience and funds, who might be able to make it competitive enough to get there, would probably spring for swerve or crab drive. teams a teir down from that resource wise usualy stick to tank drive and shifters, a octumanium or nonadrive might fall in this tier. because mechanum is "an easier way to get 3 degrees of freedom" it involves trade offs, and to get to Einstein you really cannot have many trade offs.

[ajlapp]

i doubt we will see a purely mechanum drive on Einstein, ever. team with the maximum amount of experience and funds, who might be able to make it competitive enough to get there, would probably spring for swerve or crab drive. teams a teir down from that resource wise usualy stick to tank drive and shifters, a octumanium or nonadrive might fall in this tier. because mechanum is "an easier way to get 3 degrees of freedom" it involves trade offs, and to get to Einstein you really cannot have many trade offs.

Agreed. I don't see the most competitive teams choosing mecanum anytime in the near future.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by AlecMataloni

I believe Aren's correct. Also, 2826 was VERY close to breaking the mecanum curse on einstein (although, they did use a jump drive to switch between mecanum and 6wd).

I was gonna ask if Aren would have counted 2826's jump mecanums

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

i doubt we will see a purely mechanum drive on Einstein, ever. team with the maximum amount of experience and funds, who might be able to make it competitive enough to get there, would probably spring for swerve or crab drive. teams a teir down from that resource wise usualy stick to tank drive and shifters, a octumanium or nonadrive might fall in this tier. because mechanum is "an easier way to get 3 degrees of freedom" it involves trade offs, and to get to Einstein you really cannot have many trade offs.

There was a robot on Einstein with CIMple boxes and no floor loading.

How's that for trade offs. Most of the robots on Einstein still used 6wd/8wd/skid steer tank, nothing complicated like swerve. Your logic is flawed. The drive bases on Einstein could have been produced by many "second tier" teams, the rest of the robot couldn't be though.

[Hawiian Cadder]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

There was a robot on Einstein with CIMple boxes and no floor loading.

How's that for trade offs. Most of the robots on Einstein use 6wd/8wd/skid steer tank. Your logic is flawed.

i was very disappointed with Einstein this year, it seems like most years Einstein has the 12 most competitive robots giver or take, i felt like the powerhouse robots were not distributed amongst the divisions well, and alliance choosing was not the greatest. while the teams on Einstein were amazing, i did not think it was very balanced.

[PayneTrain]

Most of the teams on Einstein could take virtually any other robot at CMP, and with practice, still be on Einstein.

They win their divisions with what lies on the other side of the wall.

[BrendanB]

I think that eventually we will see one in the next few years. I have seen several teams with mecanums who are programming their robots to give them a competitive edge. Granted there are trade offs but 1503 proved this year that trade offs don't hurt you when done right.

I have seen one mecanum robot from this year that can't be pushed easy and from knowing this team, they will build immensely on what they learned this year!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

i was very disappointed with Einstein this year, it seems like most years Einstein has the 12 most competitive robots giver or take, i felt like the powerhouse robots were not distributed amongst the divisions well, and alliance choosing was not the greatest. while the teams on Einstein were amazing, i did not think it was very balanced.

Wow, seriously? 1503 was pretty clearly one of the best robots this year, and pretty much the steal of the Newton draft. Did you not see them put up 8+ tubes on Einstein?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

i was very disappointed with Einstein this year, it seems like most years Einstein has the 12 most competitive robots giver or take, i felt like the powerhouse robots were not distributed amongst the divisions well, and alliance choosing was not the greatest. while the teams on Einstein were amazing, i did not think it was very balanced.

But Einstein is never the best 12 robots. It is the best 4 alliances. I've seen many years where the best robots don't end up on Einstein because they didn't pick well or they had bad strategy or mediocre drivers. I've said it dozens of times, a robot does not win events you have to have the whole package.

[Hawiian Cadder]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Wow, seriously? 1503 was pretty clearly one of the best robots this year, and pretty much the steal of the Newton draft. Did you not see them put up 8+ tubes on Einstein?

yes, but i knew Galileo. would still win. in past years the championships winner was pre-determined, but barring major failure, i didn't think anyone had much of a chance against the alliance that still won.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I have seen one mecanum robot from this year that can't be pushed easy

What do you think they did to make it so it couldn't be pushed easily?

[O'Sancheski]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

yes, but i knew Galileo. would still win. in past years the championships winner was pre-determined, but barring major failure, i didn't think anyone had much of a chance against the alliance that still won.

I can see what you are saying. At the start of championships, everyone knew that Galileo was the field with the best robots. But the other fields had equally as good of robots. You can't just jump to a conclusion based on who is on which field. I know there is the "Curie Curse" but everyone thought that 469 and 1114 were going to win championships last year. 67,177,and 294 pulled off an amazing victory with the odds favored against them. Galileo definitely deserved to win, but Newton gave them a run for their money in the Semi's and Archimedes gave them a pretty good run for their money in the finals. The only reason I think that Archimedes didn't reach the scores that Galileo did in the finals was because of the 3v2 that was happening.

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by Ether

What do you think they did to make it so it couldn't be pushed easily?

I can tell you what we did. We were geared near the wheel slip limit for mecanum wheels. We used 6" mecanum wheels direct driven with 12.75:1 toughboxes. Most of the time we could push defenders out of our way without too much trouble. We had a top speed of maybe 9 fps - we bet that our HP could get us game pieces so we wouldn't have to cross the field much. In my mind, two regional wins confirms that this was a legitimate strategy. Our weakness was not the drivetrain - it was our 2 second minibot.

EDIT: Also, the arrangment was very controllable - we were a perfect 11 for 11 hitting the double ubertube on Newton.

[AlecMataloni]

To the post above: it was 67, not 254 last year.

[J_Miles]

I think that the bad rep that Mecanum wheels have acquired is, in large part, due to their relative lack of experience. Mecanum drive simply has not been around for long enough for a large number of teams to really know how to "do it right." As a result, you see a lot of teams using mecanum wheels that don't execute well.

As always, there are outliers and exceptions...I personally know of a handful of teams that have built excellent Mecanum-drive robots, but few (if any) of the veteran teams have really experimented with Mecanum drive-trains enough to be willing to use them. I don't believe that Mecanum-driven robots have any sort of inherent advantage that always makes them a clear choice over other types of drivetrains; rather, I see Mecanum drive as a drive type that has its own strengths and weaknesses, just like six- or eight-wheel drives or swerve-drives. Those strengths and weaknesses must be evaluated by the team when deciding what drive type to use. At the same time, I don't see any inherent disadvantages that make Mecanum drives perpetually inferior to other types.

Mecanum wheels have their advantages and disadvantages; however, as with what has been said before: it's not the drive-train that determines how competitive a robot is, it is the whole package: drive-team, human player, end-effector, build-quality, reliability, etc.

EDIT: I think that in 2012 there is as good of a chance of a robot with Mecanum wheels on it making the trip to Einstein as any other year (unless the game turns out to be like Lunacy...in which case...well, we won't talk about Lunacy.)