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No one has said whether or not the throw wheels can spin backwards. Doesn't anybody understand why this is important?
On Amicus Expert the throw wheels can't counter-rotate, at least so I observed. Each of the 3 wheels independently either stays still or rotate with variable (per excercise) angular speed. The direction of the rotation of each wheel is "compatible" with the forward motion of the ball (so that on touch it pushes it out).
I don't know the reason. Speculation is that if some wheel rotated backwards (with respect to the direction of thrown ball), it would tend to push the ball back to robot. You'd have to make sure the other one rotates quicker to overcome the first, but that is not guaranteed, because you can manually adjust the position of the wheels - closer or further from the ball, so even the one with slower backward motion could overcome the one with faster forward motion (gravity not considered).
I never wished for stronger topspin from robot, but I indeed wish for stronger slow backspin. E.g. if you set the robot to do backspin serve, you can't set the speed of the ball too high, because it would hit net. And with slower speed (given by rotation speed of the wheel), the serve backspin is lower than my team-mates produce. The backspin on faster (non-serve) balls is good enough.
That said, that is for me the only negative vs. all positive. I can directly compare with Newgy, and the money is well spent on Amicus.
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