I allways at vex competitions see that all robots have their wheels protected. is it because they won’t get any ubstructions, or just to stabalize the wheel?
We do it for both reasons.
I think a lot of teams will cover their front wheels to avoid driving up onto something. If you only powered your center wheel and drove up onto a ring you might get stuck like that for the rest of the match.
Yeah i have noticed that the tubes quite conveniently can act as jack stands if you drive over and into them. Protecting your wheels from getting you in this kind of a position is probably a good idea.
~DK
ive seen teams do it to avoid being trapped under the ladder and also to keep things from getting entangled into them. also it is a good idea so rings dont get stuck around them and prop the bot off the ground
One of the Online Challenges this year was to create an educational video to help new teams learn about VRC. The videos were limited to two minutes. It turns out that one of them was about drive trains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6emQmZya6ec. There’s a lot of information packed into a 2-minute video here, take a look.
(New teams should take a look at all these videos: [http://forum.robotevents.com/design/challenge/detail/85#entries. There’s a lot of useful information here from some very experienced teams.)](http://forum.robotevents.com/design/challenge/detail/85#entries. There’s a lot of useful information here from some very experienced teams.))
I like cantilevered wheels in some situations, but usually it takes no more weight to bring them inside, at which point, why bother?