Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Sure, and for many other things besides swerve. The competition environment is exponentially more demanding on any robot than off-season work.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

I agree 100% just because a system works in the off season until you know the game you will not know if that system can compete for the game.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

It's literally the difference between looking at the spec for a car engine vs taking apart like 4 of them.
That's more of a general statement in response to the notion that winning is the metric of doing your best and that someone should build a subsystem because it wins and is easy for them rather than because it is the best they can do. It's not about what you make it's why. I am not putting down 254 or anyone else for doing well with a specific system. I'm also not saying you really have to be original you should however push your own envelope as much as possible.

To the weight thing... I mean make an example of a situation where a team would become comfortable with building something to the point where the only new thing done with it from year to year would be minor optimizations that don't generally teach anything new to those working on it precisely because they are so comfortable with it. What you described were tangible optimizations and upgrades made to better complete the game.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Well I'm sorry, but it is a universal truth at the current time. The keyword isn't never, it's necessary. Swerve is never necessary. There is no situation in modern day FRC where the only possible solution is swerve. Until FIRST makes a game where swerve is required, the phrase, "Swerve is never necessary" will be a universal truth. If that statement were false, the only winners of Einstein would be swerve drives, and I know you're a smart kid who follows FRC and its history, so you know that's not the case. Can swerve be advantageous for some? Certainly. Is it ever necessary though? Never.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

You appear to have some pretty strong opinions, and that's fine. I just popped into this thread to say a couple things.

1. The most successful teams in this program are also consistently pushing their own boundaries in an attempt to be the best. Just because you don't know what those improvements are doesn't mean they aren't there.

2. I cannot speak for other teams, however, at the beginning of the build season our problem statement is to win the World Championship. As such, our robots are built for the sole purpose of winning matches. We implement features and push boundaries that we think will contribute to this goal.

3. When your team participates in this competition you start with a set of rules and a set objective. There isn't actually any room for your own definition of "great" engineering or what the "best" robot is. These are quantitatively defined by on-field results independent of thoughts, feelings, and opinions. That is the nature of competition.

Cheers, Bryan

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

I know it's a universal truth. But it always will be, unless the rules starts demanding swerve drives. The rules also don't specify that you have to drive, so therefore it's unnecessary to drive. But it's useless to say that because driving is useful. Same with swerves. It's not necessary, but that means nothing (or almost nothing) in terms of whether it should be done or not.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Some people here would disagree with this premise. For me at least, when I think of FRC I think of a competition. And quite frankly, "Winning is inspirational." I do genuinely care about building a robot that I can be proud of, and this year despite us being rookies, my team did very well with a robot that was not exceedingly complex. When I look at swerve drives, I am impressed by engineering complexity, but I will never put challenge above performance. The swerve drives I have been most impressed by are the ones that are the lightest, the most powerful, or the least resource intensive.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

If the only thing about FIRST that mattered was competition what then of GP? Why does the game change every year? What of the Chairman's award? None of those are necessary for competition. We are here primarily to learn and inspire not compete. The competition serves as a catalyst and goal not the primary focus of FIRST or FRC. That mentality of build a robot primarily to win and compete only hits part of the point. If I had the same opinion back in 2010 I wouldn't be here. I'd have said "wow that looks hard and not necessary therefore I will not do it" not "wow that looks hard, I should find a team somewhere." As a teenager I don't need to know what an FPGA is or the free speed of a CIM motor. Yet a while ago I decided to learn some interesting yet normally useless information for my day to day life. Why bother knowing how planetary gearboxes work? Yet it will be advantageous later in life as an engineer. Similarly: Swerve is advantageous from a learning perspective and competitively if done well. I don't need to know how, you don't need to know how but you will know that much more. Why did you join FRC to win a competition or to learn more about engineering, math, pizza, water games, and teamwork?

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

We've wanted to make one for probably a decade now, and still never have. We've been doing FIRST for 14 years now, we have mentors who have been doing it nearly as long, we have full in-house CNC manufacturing capabilities, machining mentors, a very well educated programming mentor from a highly-esteemed institution, and students with 3 full years experience behind them. We have the capability to build two identical robots ( and have done so twice) and access to a full size practice field.

We have downloaded and studied the CAD models of other teams' swerve drives and have twice begun modeling one of our own.

We still have not built a swerve and it's not likely that we will for 2015.

Why not? Years ago our team decided that we would never build a swerve drive during build season unless we'd previously done it during the offseason., and that never happened.

What is our reasoning for that decision? We've determined that the marginal performance gains in the drive system do not outweigh the additional time requirements to design, fabricate, refine, and program it. That time can be spent further developing and refining other parts of the robot.

And this is what frustrates me a little bit about the current state of COTS items. Years ago, teams could gain a significant advantage by heavily investing in the design, development, and manufacturing of these complex systems. Now, you're at a large disadvantage if you choose to do something custom over buying it. Why, you've lost time you literally could have bought. But buy buying it, you've lost the learning process. We're teaching students how to pick things out of a catalog (which is a great skill to have!) rather than teaching them to make the things that are in the catalogs (or better yet not in any catalogs). But, that's another discussion for another thread.

Part of our "problem" is that we doall the manufacturing in house. We can't spend 4 weeks on CAD, send it out to be laser cut and bent on a CNC press brake, and get a robot back in 3 days. We don't have that kind of sponsor like some teams do. If we don't have the mill running on day 2, we don't finish. And that's with a WCD.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

My Team got the Wild Swerve kit from Team 221 before i got involved in the team and it didn't work out so well. It took us the summer and someof the fall to get it to be mechanically sound. We made a fatal mistake and didn't get the hubs thats allow for the wires to come up the middle. Our programmers worked the whole summer and fall on code. We gave them the robot the day before our fall comp it didn't work out. They then continued to work on the Swerve during the rest of the fall getting no results.
Even though i'm a freshman, i have been to competitions since 2012. I always saw the Swerve as the Holy Grail (1717). However after working with it i can tell you that you need to make sure you have the resources. You need to fully think it through even when buying the pre fabricated versions. Otherwise you will be getting a lot of over night shipping. It was also over the heads of our 4 programers who were used to meccanum drive. For a team with middle of the road fiancees I think that it was a bad decision even though it seemed super cool. Make sure to go through both the upside and downside for your team. The pre fabricated versions also way a lot as well (80x20). We will continue to work on the swerve drive over the next few years but it has become more of a long term goal for us.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Emphasis mine. It's called FRC because it is a competition, where the best win. Your argument seems to be based on the premise that maximized learning is more important than winning the competition. I disagree, the choice of mechanism should not be based on how steep the learning curve is, because there is also learning in the iteration stage, and even if we don't learn the same things,we both come away learning something.

I am not offended, just a reminder to think about what you say.

Consider a team that has used the kitbot for a few years, not because they are comfortable with the kitbot, but because they are uncomfortable developing their own drivetrain because of the diversion of resources away from other mechanisms (which change almost every year, allowing for a wider range of new learning possibilities).

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

I was looking at the graph, and realized that the spikes were not the offseason like I thought they were but instead during the season (or rather, the first 6 moths of the year, which is 2/3 during the season) (if I'm reading it correctly), except for this year. Seems like the advice to do it in the offseason first has sunk in.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

It is completely dependent on what type of swerve you are running, but in all swerves you use up more motors and in independent swerve you actually tend to push worse(wheels come off the ground)

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Put when you push, you can choose to push in exactly the direction you want, which may lend a greater advantage.
Plus, why push when you can a) lock wheels in an x and not move at all or b) Leroy Jenkins out of there.

Re: pic: 2015, Year of swerves?
 

Do you have any first hand experience with this x arrangement you keep referring to? As a drive coach, our drivers have never had issues pushing a swerve with x locked wheels, except in the case where we are 90lbs and they are 120lbs.