Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderTheOK
No system should be avoided because of "programming difficulty" because the programmers should be starting solving problems day one with working mockups.
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With all due respect, this single line is absolutely awful advice. Teams should not be ignorant of their limitations and should definitely not underestimate the challenges of betting their entire season on the effectiveness of their software team.
Every team is run differently and is composed of totally different people of different skill sets. Some teams have barely 1 student who can write all of the robot code, some teams have a few students but no mentors, some teams have a mentor or two but no students, and others have entire software teams at their disposal. Exposure to control theory and advanced embedded control is similarly mixed.
Swerve drive, within a season, is out of the reach of the majority of teams. A swerve drive that is decidedly more competitive than a similarly optimized tank drive is out of the reach of the VAST majority of teams. Even your own example is of a swerve drive that, in your words, had a configuration that did not work.
The biggest reason not to do swerve drive isn't simply that it's difficult, it's that tank drive is much easier and is 95% as effective at least. It can be made fantastic with good software but works well even when the software does not. And every other part of your robot depends on the drivetrain to see the light of day. Not moving reliably or quickly is an unacceptable risk for most teams.