From experience this year, we discovered that not many teams build the X drive.
I just wanna see what opinions do you have on different drive systems and which one is better?
We are using an X drive.
Advantages:
-Strafing saves time in autonomous, and can juke opponents 
-Faster than normal 4 motor speed drive (most of the times);
Disadvantages:
-Harder to build.
-More encoders,
-WEIGHT distribution
!
WHAT DRIVE DO YOU GUYS PREFER? Love to hear them!
X-drive with turbo gearing. Our x-drive works without an encoder?
BANSHEE DRIVE, come at me vex forums
My team is using regular tank drive, direct. 4 motors all high speed. We prefer this because we want a bot that is fast on the field so we can get to ball faster than other bots. The disadvantages of this is that u cant fake opponents and that is will be hard to escape when 2 bots from the opposing alliance is trapping u preventing u from going back to the climbing zone to shoot or lift. I like the idea of the x drive but never really built one. U r right it will be more complicated.
Hopefully someone will not bash on you guys for this design. Again.
Anyways, imo a x-holonomic drive is best for anyone aiming for a high scoring autonomous, but a regular geared up tank drive is fine too.
well, for precision, you should prob use 4 encoders. 2 is adequate, but is less accurate of course.
Nice! Well it is not THAT hard to build. Takes some time to experiment with it. Our first prototype, it drive curved for some reasons, so you really have to figure out the motor speeds and which motors do not spin the same, then replace them. After a few tries, we used it on our bot and it won tournament and excellence lol lol.
Well ours works without encoders or sensors. It moves a lot straighter then a tank drive.
Yeah, but during autonomous mode, it is more accurate by counting rotations than time because time depends on battery voltage and rotation doesn’t.
Which is what your engineers notebook is for. To keep track of modifications and list of things. And battery voltage.
Problem is, battery voltage varies too much to provide a consistently accurate autonomous(trust me, I’ve tried). Kev is correct in saying that encoders will give you a more accurate autonomous especially if you’re using an x-drive.
P.S. Who keeps track of battery voltage in an engineering notebook?
I do. This is coming from a x8 design award winner. Believe me detail always matters.
It may be a weird thing to document, but we do document it as it does play into the design process of our robot.
Well, congratulations on those design awards. Just goes to show why I should probably stop questioning people’s logic. But seriously, I’d strongly suggest that you start using encoders on your x-drive. Even if your bot drives straight without them, they’re pretty useful in programming your autonomous programs. Then you wouldn’t have to rely so heavily on your batteries being perfectly charged so that your time based program doesn’t go off.
Yeah I probably should. My logic is weird. I’m the only 11- year old in 8th grade, so the other kids look like giants to me.
To add to the original discussion, I personally prefer using a 4 motor high strength direct mecanum wheel drive.
No one can push you from the side and you have the benefit of being able to strafe like an x-drive. Absolutely no downsides whatsoever right?
(It’s really, really slow.)
wait. obviousely when you charge batteries you get slightly different voltages. How the heck am I supposed to keep track of that in the notebook? Encoders ensure that you don’t get messed up with bad batteries.
BTW: X8 design award basically means that you got 2nd place for 8 times. Better notebook for excellence!
Wait design award is like second place excellence award?
other people looking like giants does not relate to the discussion. Cool though
Again, my logic is weird