Quote:
Originally Posted by menace101
And I would like to bring up the 4WD drive with the steering similar to a car, what's that called, by the way? I think it would definitely give us more control overall. Especially when compared to skid steering or something. One question that bothers me about it though, will the low coefficients of friction render this kind of steering just not worth the time input into designing and making the system?
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"Car" style steering is known as Ackermann Steering (front wheels steer), and the variation (like a monster truck, and some luxury cars have) is called 4WS (4 wheel steer)
"Swerve", or "Crab" drive systems are where the wheels are rotated to point in the direction you want to go, (typically they can be turned at least 180deg so you can get the full gamut of translational possibilities).
"Kiwi" drive is using 3 omniwheels spaced 120deg apart traditionally, but in this years game, it would likely be possible with the rover wheels, you drive the front two toward each other to move forward, and steer with the rear one.
"Holonomic" drive is using 4 omniwheels spaced 90deg apart. By varying the speeds, you can achieve translation in any direction. I expect this too would be possible with the rover wheels
"Mecanum" drive is using mecanum wheels (like omniwheels, only the rollers are on 30-45deg angles instead of 90s, and you mount them like a "regular" 4wd setup). These too can be used to achieve translation in any direction. They're not usable this year in any way (well, unless, i suppose if you were to build one using rover wheels as the rollers).
Those, plus 4wd, 6wd, and 6wd-dropcenter are the most common drive systems seen on FIRST robots (well, kiwi isnt exactly popular, but you sometimes see it mentioned). There are others as well, but these form the bulk of whats out there.