Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

In the past few years, our team has gotten quite comfortable with swerve drive and were hoping to use it again this season. However, with the complex field elements and unforgiving terrain, I fear that swerve may not be the best option.

Are there any other teams that are considering a swerve drive? Or do you feel that such a drive system is inherently weak in this kind of game?

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

We have been prototyping a swerve drive system during this past offseason but I don't see a specific advantage to using it in this particular game.

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

We are. you have a choice of two drive systems this year. tank or swerve, everything else is a waste of time(maccanum, omni).

a tank with treads will be the easiest way to deal with defenses, but will suffer compared to swerve since it can't move sideways. this may or may not be desirable depending on what your game strategy is. We plan on scoring balls in the high goal so to be able to precisely aim and out maneuver any potential defensive robot, swerve is the choice for us. If you plan on being a defense tackling robot than your choice is probably better served by tank.

Most tanks will suffer due to how their frame is setup though(KOP chasis included). so you still need to put a lot of work into making sure you can properly navigate the obstacles

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

I don't think that swerve is inherently weak in this game. I do, however, think that it would limit your options. That's a choice you could make - but it's important to make that choice with your eyes open.

If you intended to use your (pretty awesome) swerve drive once again, you could consider focusing on tower damage and scoring boulders, while using the low bar to get from the neutral zone to the offense zone. Most likely, the defenses in category B and D would be impenetrable to you, but I'm sure there are other ways around the other categories of defenses.

In fact, being able to go under the low bar could help you a lot; note that the defenses in category C seem to be "open-from-behind" defenses. You could be a robot that helps their alliance get through those particular defenses, because you can get over to the other side more quickly.

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

You can always build swerve with 8" pneumatic wheels....something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAqA2OztnpE

Thank you to NASA Robotics Engineers AKA FRC118 Mentors.

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

This is also a good example.

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

I think the bigger issue with swerve is not the size of the wheels, but ensuring proper wheel and frame alignment with the obstacles.

Re: Swerve Drive in Stronghold
 

3 point swerve then it's not as big of an issue =p actually we plan to use field locked orientation with IMU which should ensure our wheels are always properly lined up for obstacles with temporary override to fetch boulders