Introduction to Drive Trains
Drive trains are the thing that your robot drives around on and are essential to every game.
#Purpose The purpose is to move the robot around the field and get you to all the points on the field that you need to be. It should also be able to push, pull, or climb over game elements as the game requires. Therefore the robot’s goals for locations and size should be considered when designing the drive train. Moving around the field is required in almost every game. This subsystem is the most important and is the hardest to change later on in the season. The drive train needs to be durable and reliable because it is hard to change and fix any major problems. When designing a drive train you need to consider how much agility, pushing force, and speed are needed and required be the game.
#Choosing a Drive Train Look through all of the different drive trains and look at each of the pros and cons before continuing reading this section. Evaluate each of the pros and cons of each drive train and decide how important each of these qualities are. An easy way to quantitatively do this is with a weighted objectives table. Example of a weighted objective table:
| Weight | Tank | Swerve | Slide | Mecanum | Holo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agility | ? | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Strength | ? | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Motors | ? | 5 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Program | ? | 5 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Drive | ? | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Traverse | ? | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Design | ? | 5 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
The weighting of each category is heavily dependent on the game and resources. Weighting can be done in any way you want. The resource that provided this table suggested a 0-10 weighting. Our team has not necessarily made a full table and goes for tank considering the fact that tank has a lot of 5s and will win in most weighting systems.
Useful Tips to Reduce Tipsiness
1) put gearboxes in the middle of a 6 wheel tank 2) low center of gravity 3) Have an even number of wheels (i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.)