Quote:
Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi
Man you guys get better and better each season!
Question: Why did you choose to build a swerve again? Has it become so refined now that you can basically just get one machined in week 1? If not, what iteration went into the modules?
Do you guys plan to climb then shoot, or shoot first and then climb?
Looks great and I'm excited to see the full field shots!
-Akash
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Thanks, Akash!
We'll be shooting first--our climber puts our shooter pointing basically vertical. We should be able to dump 4 colored disks, though.
We went for swerve this year mainly because we saw a lot of field-crossing in our future. (We've got a low-priority basic floor pickup, but there are still a lot of disks behind that wall.) We also like aiming with it. Really though, no matter how much we mentors try to temper it expectations each year, the students always want to do it--they love the challenge, especially the programmers! They find it inspirational, so we go with it
We can churn out all the module parts in about a week, and fabrication takes the sub-team much of the weekend. It's definitely refined--fourth generation now--but it still evolves a bit every year. We're happy that we managed to reduce the weight (8.6 to 7.9lb/ea), size (almost and inch off the width and height), and cost (not much, but with COTs prices climbing it's still pretty good) this year. Mounting is a bit more robust, machining is a little faster, maintenance is easier...just all around a little tighter, stronger, smarter. Also, it's back to RS540s (we had to run 395s last year), and we're experimenting with the white HiGrips.