Swerve drive
 

For our offseason we want to start work on a swerve drive design.
We have no experience (yet) in this area so we want gain knowledge by talking to swerve teams at worlds.
Who is going to worlds, has a swerve drivetrain and is willing to share information and talk to us?

Greetings from the Netherlands!
Team Rembrandts 4481

Re: Swerve drive
 

We are not technically qualified yet, but we are reasonably sure we will make it to Worlds after this weekend. Stop by team #246's pit and we'll talk about our experience with Wild Swerves from 221 Robotic Systems, which was very positive.

We built Rover in the fall and used that as a coding platform for developing our Swerve Coding Skills. We literally could not have done swerve on this year's robot without that fall practice project.

Cheers,
Joe J.

Re: Swerve drive
 

We've built a swerve drive this year and we will be at champs if you want to have a look at our CAD files.

I think we've made the only 2-speed swerve drive this year

just come by 3360's pit and we'll be glad to help you :)

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/41416

Re: Swerve drive
 

Team 234 has a very effective swerve drive this year. Although we're fairly new at having one, "only our 2nd year doing it", we've produced a very efficient drive system. Stop by our pit at worlds and we'll be glad to show you how we came up with it!

Re: Swerve drive
 

2468 has never used swerve before this year. It was one of our banned words not to be uttered in the shop, simply because it was not a solution we had any off-season experience with.

However, this year, due to the availability of a COTS solution and student demand, we opted to permit the use of the AM swerve modules. If I recall correctly, the current iteration of a corner is: am-3009 (CIM replaced with a mini CIM) + 3D-printed position-sensing gear + MA3-A10-250-N encoder + Talon SRX with analog breakout board for steering + Victor SP for drive. We program in LabVIEW.

Feel free to swing by our pit and ask our students of their experiences with these modules (driving them, integrating them, and programming them).

Kudos and our thanks to the Bomb Squad for helping us with the swerve control software.

We are toying with the idea of doing an off season project to design, manufacture, and test our own swerve module.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Swing by team 1323's pit this year for the most compact and lightweight swerve yet.

Re: Swerve drive
 

Perhaps you can back up this claim, I'd love to you see put together an article for beyondinspection about it.

Other teams to look at for swerve at Worlds: 16, 696, 1717

Re: Swerve drive
 

Turn it down a little bit.

Re: Swerve drive
 

I'd like to see pictures, CAD and a scale to back this up. I'm going to guess that 1717 is single speed this year and managed to save some weight out of their already 1st tier swerve.

I hope frc 2451 has one of their swerve modules from last year in the pit.

Re: Swerve drive
 

195 took the AM Swerve (am-3009) and made some simple mods to put it "on steroids".

It for sure isn't the lightest, fastest, or best module out there, but we're pleased with how it came out and how easy it was to integrate.

Feel free to stop by our pit at Worlds to see it and ask questions. We will have a spare module to handle.

Re: Swerve drive
 

We've had a lot of luck with 221's Revolution Pro modules. They are awesome:

http://www.team221.com/viewproduct.php?id=147

It would be nice if we could get a different wheel on there and I suspect custom wheels might become an off-season project for us. Great setup though.

Re: Swerve drive
 

See if you can stop by 1640's pit, they're always more then happy to talk about their swerves. They've been using them for years now and gone through a million iterations. It's really neat stuff.

Edit: by years, I mean somewhere around 6-8 seasons

Re: Swerve drive
 

Since 2010. Drop by anytime! We're also open source on the website.

Feel free to stop by 4143 MARS/WARS pit. We are a 4th year team but have multiple iterations of home-built swerve designs (have previously posted CAD for one of those iterations, a search on CD should find that post) and have used swerve each of the past two years in competition. Happy to talk about pros/cons, software, and team #chainless or team #slipring (hey bombsquad). Grab any student in the pit.

Edit: I'm not involved in coding, but if memory serves Bomb Squad's code was something we started with. Still appreciated. By the way, bring back #mercotac.

Re: Swerve drive
 

hey mars/wars

Feel free to stop by and talk to us as well. We can't get enough swerve. :)

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.

Re: Swerve drive
 

How much weight do your swerve modules come out to be? I am working on one during the off season and want to make it as light and compact as possible.

Re: Swerve drive
 

There's a lot of pictures and info about our swerve at 2015blog.team696.org. I'll be at championships and f you an find me, I'd be glad to answer any questions about it, but I won't have one with me, and the team will not be there.

Re: Swerve drive
 

our 2-speed modules weighed 9 pounds each.
we will take the second speed away, and if we manage to get the extra gears out, it would weight aprox. 7.5 - 8 pound each

Re: Swerve drive
 

My team is also interested in trying swerve but we have a lot of questions about programming them. (We use java)
We'll be in St. Louis as well.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Swerve drive
 

we work with java as well :)

just come by our pit at champs and we'll be glad to answer your questions!

Re: Swerve drive
 

Team 2471 (Team Mean Machine) has a season #2 swerve drive that we would love to talk to people about.

I think teams in their first year of swerve might be interested in our system, as it is simple to machine and assemble.

We also have several software innovations, that we look forward to telling people about. Stop by the pit if you're interested!

Re: Swerve drive
 

I'd say, what wasn't this you 12 year of consecutive swerve drive ? also love the having a talk to your team at worlds