Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBasse
You used to see a lot of caster style robots back when I was in high school, but they haven't been too common lately. They went out of favor and there are a lot of strong opinions as to why. A search will turn up a lot of results, although eh are skewed with the influx of swerve designs comin out lately. So look at old posts.
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It's not just opinions - every unpowered caster you have on your robot is mathematically robbing you of traction, causing you to both lose pushing matches and being easier to be pushed during defense.
2WD with casters used to be really popular in FRC a decade+ ago before there were were good kitbots and COTS sprockets, wheels, omni-wheels, etc. When you used to have to buy steel sprockets from SDP/SI, McMaster, Small Parts, and/or Martin you used to have to have a lathe and mill to make them usable for live and dead axle applications.
Teams that didn't have these machine shop resources could often make a 2WD work, but couldn't really tackle anything more. So they threw two casters on their robot to allow it to drive around. Swerve hasn't replaced casters, kitbots and COTS parts have made them obsolete.