[AllenGregoryIV]

We didn't have swerve but we had a fully omni-directional drive with driver centric control software. It was a very intuitive way to drive the robot. Our driver could pick up a tube and while driving back to the base either manually turn the robot with his right joystick or hit a single button and have it swing around to face him, all while just pulling the left joystick back to keep it moving towards the rack. A PID loop is running constantly to hold the orientation of the robot so even if it is hit it will turn back to the correct orientation. This could very easily and I believe has been implemented on independently steered swerve robots.

Having the robot automatically turn to the direction of travel would not be difficult but I don't think it would be all that beneficial. When you wanted to strafe the robot would turn to that orientation instead of sliding sideways.

Initially our design process lead us to believe that a fully omni-directional swerve drive train would be best for this years game, manufacturing and cost limitations prevented us from attempting to build it.