What is the rational for very fast steering response and why is there a need to expend allot of power to accomplish this?
This is a link to a page showing what we have done with swerve.
http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?title=Swerve_Central
We use a RS540 and banes bot 1 : 133 trans. Plenty for power and speed. Other designs and drive wheels may need more power but this solution has worked well for us.
I would caution on the use of Jags for positional control. We burned up several on the steering motors. We have used Victors and Talons for the steering motors with out failures.
For auto navigation, Tight PID tuning, well calibrated and accurate steering angle sensor and a good stable gyro - IMU are needed. Swerve does not like to go straight.
For teleop, a looser PID can actually be better. This is especially true if the driver is the button smasher gamer type. Next year we are planning on a very tight PID values for Auto and looser PID values for teleop. This year we tuned it to a value between the 2 ideal settings.
For 2015 we are looking forward to the power distribution boards ability to log current draw of all motors. The excel spread sheet and code TOM LINE posted looks very promising for swerve power analysis under battle field conditions. We don't know what our swerve consumes on the field and we should know this.
So again I ask why is there a need to bash the steering for very fast and precise angle?