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Honest opinion on 2017 drivetrains
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(poll) I'd simply like your personal opinion on which drive train you believe will be the most competitive in Steamworks. |
Re: Honest opinion on 2017 drivetrains
It is never "what's best", it is always "what's best for your team". The theoretical best drivetrain is just a fun thought experiment.
For the vast majority of teams, it will once again be a tank drive. A drop-center if the wheelbase is longer than it is wide (or squareish); a 4WD is fine if it's wide enough. Some of the alignment in this game could be made a little easier with a well implemented strafing drivetrain, but I don't think the advantage is so big that the lost practice and build time required to develop this drivetrain would be fully offset. |
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OR if two of the wheels are not super grippy (e.g. omniwheels or just hard plastic wheels) For that matter, I'm not sure that a simple 2WD with center wheel drives and casters front and back wouldn't be just fine this year. Don't let a ball get you high centered but that is true for pretty much any drive. High centering is never a good thing even if your robot can recover... FWIW. Dr. Joe J. |
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What if my teams drive train isn't an option?
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Honestly I am so behind Holonomic/omnidrive its not even funny. I think the best teams at worlds will have holo/omni as it will be able to zoom around and pick up balls the fastest. I believe that in the worlds final matches control of the balls will be the key factor as each alliance will be able to complete gears no problem (unless maybe there is a world scoring re-balancing like there was last year with the increased tower strength).
I'm interested if someone wants to argue my points, always fun to hear a new side. |
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Considering the "open field" nature of this game, tank will definitely be most effective. It also seems that historically speaking, tank has been the most successful style of drive train year after year.
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In my opinion a well executed swerve drive will be king this year.
After that we have tank. H Drive and Mecanum Drive trains wont be bad until eliminations where they will be completely wrecked by defenders. Good luck trying to align for anything with a robot pushing yours around. |
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Effective and Successful are not the same thing in this context and can't be used interchangeably. Please clarify - when you say tank will be the most successful do you mean that you expect more winning robots to be tank drive? Or do you mean they will be more effective at achieving game objectives than any other style of drive train? |
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I don't see any need for tank treads because there is nothing to drive over, and being able to strafe seems unnecessary as well. We will use the KOP drive base, but honestly I think it's good enough for this year
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For a poorly designed swerve drive, high unexpected lateral loads will simply break it. |
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I think I'm stuck with simple drivetrains this year. Space on the robot feels more valuable, field doesn't have much in terms of obstacles.
Dunno maybe 6 - 8 wheel tanks, possibly skid steer... |
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You can always say that a well-executed swerve drive by a team that knows both how to build it and how to get the most out of it with programming could be the most effective. That being said, the most effective drivetrain is often the one your team can drive the best and gets you where you want to go despite your opposition. The drivetrain you can drive best is the one you can practice with the most, and getting where you want to go usually means having good traction, either to run through defense or to play it.
[aside] Yes, we can debate about whether mecanum/holonomic allows you to juke out your defenders, making traction irrelevant, but suffice it to say that finding this level of skill and control in a driver and robot, if it exists, is rare. [/aside] There are a select few teams that have the capacity to build a complex drivetrain fast and train their drivers to a high degree of skill with it, but for everyone else, stick to a 4/6/8-wheel skid steer and it will be the most effective for you. To fulfill Andrew's definitions, a skid steer will be the most effective drivetrain choice for most teams, and as such it will be the most successful drivetrain on aggregate across FRC. |
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Smart defense is going to be played in the middle of the field, where there is close to 0 chance of getting a penalty. In the middle of the field, it doesn't matter what your drive is if you know how to drive smart. That said there are only a few drives I would do this year and standard west-coast is at the top of that list. |
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A well-executed swerve will be the most effective this year. With an open field layout, but some areas where maneuvering is essential, not to mention its ability to resist being pushed by rotating the wheels against defense, it should be great. Steamworks is essentially swerve heaven.
That being said, many teams will be trying swerve for the first time this year, and from experience, that scares me. To new teams doing swerve: please use the resources available to you to succeed at its design and programming: I don't want to see any other teams sitting still in most of their matches or twitching and burning holes in the carpet, like we and other teams have done. Also, feel free to shoot me a PM if you need any other help. |
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Can you start to make this an annual post like the score predictions post? I would love to see the change over time.
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I would be surpised if something other than 6 wheel drives to be the majority of drive trains. And since most perennial powerhouses are vehemently opposed to purely holonomic drive trains (mecanum, kiwi, omni), that leaves tank and swerve, with a smidgen of butterfly. I'm guessing > 75% of robots on Einsteins will have 6 wheel drive. |
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I am very interested to see if a team will be going after a drive style seen on 9973 at 2013 MTTD or 33's 2014 drive and I will be monitoring for their performance.
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