Re: Swerve drive
 

1640 has an entire wiki dedicated to the development of their swerve modules: http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?title=Swerve_Central

Start designing yours now so that you have a good list of questions to ask teams when you get to CMP. Write down a list of questions. The first teams that come to mind when people think of good swerves are 16, 973, 1323, 1640, 368, 1717(possibly the best there is), and 118. These teams have all developed a good swerve drive in the past or currently use one that's been in production for several years.

Also, make sure to have some programming questions ready when you get there because that's one of the most challenging parts.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Follow up:

Don't forget 16, their swerve is as good or better than most of the ones you've mentioned. Also, check out 1640 and ask them about some of their more recent control software updates from the past season or two, the way they drive is really awesome. And for a first-iteration swerve drive, 696 seemed to have a really good handle on the process; their system is very cool. 3360 has a two-speed swerve, which is way awesome as well.

Re: Swerve drive
 

I don't know about last years modules, but they almost certainly will have some of this years swerve modules in their pit. They had a spare to pass around at Midwest last weekend. They fold down too, for getting out of transport configuration. I don't know where 2451 ranks on worldwide swerve rankings, but they're pretty high on my personal list.

Re: Swerve drive
 

We will definitely have one of the fold-down swerve modules from our practice robot this year in the pit. We could probably bring one of our modules from 2014 as well if there's interest. Our main programming student behind the swerve will also be at champs (he couldn't attend Midwest) and can answer questions about that as well.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Look at the AndyMark Swerve and Steer. The only out-of-the-box solution to swerve that's I've seen. All it needs is the right programming.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Feel free to check out 537's swerve at our pits. We tried swerve for the first time this year, which was a lot of work but very fun and rewarding. We are also interested in talking to other more experienced teams about controlling/coding swerve because we have yet to unlock swerve's full potential.

Re: Swerve drive
 

I will be attending champs and will be happy to explain anything you want about programming the swerve.

Re: Swerve drive
 

It may be tougher to find these teams, but I think it would be worthwhile to talk to teams who tried swerve for the first time and struggled. What did they struggle with and is there anything they would have done different?

Re: Swerve drive
 

Re: Swerve drive
 

221's is a bit more piecemeal than the AM solution. Neither really has sensors integrated out of the box though and you'll need them to get the most out of a swerve system.

Re: Swerve drive
 

3419 built a swerve this year after many years of offseason iterations. It is not the lightest or most compact one out there, but it was highly effective. Feel free to come by our pit at the championship and we can show you what we did. We are using parts of the 221 revolution swerve but ended up swapping out a lot of parts of it with custom ones, including different wheels then come standard with it.

Also, someone commented that they had the only 2-speed swerve this year, but that's not true - ours is two speed as well. At least it was in our first competition. We found that we never used the high speed, and that was the only thing we used pneumatics for, so we locked it into the slow gear, stripped off all of the pnuematics, and used the weight for other improvements.

Re: Swerve drive
 

We plan on removing our low speed for champs to probably add a canburglar...
Hope we get enough weight off the bot

Re: Swerve drive
 

We used the AM Swerve as well. Can you share a few of the mods you made to the AM Swerve? We made a few as well.

Dremeled out the slot of the spur gear for a 2mm key that interfaces with the CIM motor shaft. We then put a 2mm key in the slot with the shaft collar around it. This required taking each module completely apart.

We 3D printed a gear that is one to one in size to the directional gear and then attached an MA3 encoder from US Digital to the gear for programming of direction and getting an absolute zero for direction. I cannot explain much in terms of electronics or programming but we will have our programmers in the pit as well as helping Greg McKaskle from NI on a LabView presentation at Champs.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Our team did one the year before I was on (also during our rookie year). Those who were on the team didn't really like it, and said that to take full advantage your drivers need to practice. Take a look at our page on our Swerve: http://www.teamneutrino.org/seasons/...swerve-module/
However, I recommend taking a look at a butterfly type drive (where you can have 2 different wheel types. http://www.teamneutrino.org/seasons/...bot/butterfly/

Re: Swerve drive
 

What mods did you add to make the swerve and steer better? It's a possibility for our off-season project and we could probably get some good experience modifying a premade unit.