Is there any point of adding wedges to a chassis that uses omnidirectional wheels in a tank drive configuration? My chassis is not a bling drive, nor does it have any ability to push horizontally (unpowered and non-locked omni wheels).
it might reduce an opponent’s ability to push you sideways somewhat. But if you don’t have anything keeping your robot from freely drifting sideways then there probably isn’t much point, as anyone will be able to push you. if you were to add a locked omni in the middle of each side of your drive then wedges might become more useful.
adding wedges to the front and back can be useful however, as you can resist pushing from those directions just fine with an all-omni drive.
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Is there anything that I can do to resist opponents pushing my drivetrain, without majorly changing the chassis (like without making it a bling drive, etc)?
you could lock the front or back omnis. it will change the center of rotation for the robot, but will resist pushing more.
this year it isn’t that important to resist pushing though, because there isn’t any defense in skills or remote events.
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Okay, thank you for the advice, I may try to lock the back omnis.
Hey I have been meaning to ask this but just remembered. Can the center wheel that is locked change the center of rotation if it is not powered.
it can.
with all omni wheels, the bot tends to rotate around the center of mass (I think)
but with locked omnis it will rotate around the center of the drive, in between the locked omnis.
in many robots these are roughly the same places though, so it shouldn’t make that big a difference.
main downside to locked omnis is that you have a less slippery drive, you can’t do any sliding or drifting, which can be useful.
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Yah makes sense. I will test with and without center friction wheels. Because the way I designed my drive I can use a normal wheel.
Nope this isn’t that accurate because during TT I remember to test a gyroscope I had my robot turning in circles and one thing I noticed was that it turned with a heavy bias towards the back of the robot. It surely has to do with the large and heavy tray and towers being in the back and putting more weight on the back wheels so they have a greater impact on the turn.
Wedges look cool even if there’s no purpose. I’ll automatically give the team some respect if I see wedges on their bot.
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I always kind of get that feeling too because of TP worlds. I always remember 365X’s robot with the wedges. They definitely seemed to be useful in TP.