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Re: Swerve Drive
Dr Joe,
For 2006, 07, and 08, we used your Nothing But Dewalt CIM setup with a bevel gear on the drill output shaft. We just trued up the casting designed for the handle and shoved it into a collar that aligned it with the horizontal gear mounted to the wheel like a sprocket. I think it was a 2:1 bevel gear set from Martin and it wasn't cheap. It did work pretty well and never failed. we just set the lash by feel and clamped the drill nose with set screws. It worked well enough to make it to the Einstein finals in 2008.
I just couldn't stand the inefficiency and we moved away from the transmissions and bevel gears the last few years. The motors sure stay a lot cooler these days.
As for crab vs swerve. The code to steer from straight through an arc to rotating around the center of the frame has taken years to perfect. Actually, we had the trig working on the Basic Stamp in 1999 but changed to look up tables through the PIC years. We finally got a better version of real time trig working last year. Crab, on the other hand, takes about 10 minutes to point all the wheels in the same direction and turn all the wheels the same speed.
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