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Strategic Uses of Swerve Drive
So a few mentors / students / teammates and I were talking on the way back from IRI about the strategic benefits of swerve drive in competition this year. As we have never built a swerve and have often desired omnidirectional movement, seeing many successful swerve teams at IRI (111, 71, 16, 33, sorry if I left you out) was rather inspiring. One person went so far as to say that in general if a team knows how to build a swerve, they shouldn't opt out of it.
Being a little apprehensive about new, cool, shiny, breakable ideas, I did some research and talked to a few people and noticed that nearly every team that builds swerve drives chooses not to in specific years, or sometimes never again. Basically, what I'm wondering is for the "swerve teams" to answer a few questions for my team... (I have a few ideas as to answers, but I have no experience...)
What thought process do you guys go through to determine if a swerve chassis has strategic benefit for a particular year?
Why don't you build a swerve every year? What are the drawbacks?
Have you ever regretted the choice to build a swerving chassis?
Any answers would be appreciated. Thanks!
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Mentor / Drive Coach: 228 (2016-?)
...2016 Waterbury SFs (with 3314, 3719), RIDE #2 Seed / Winners (with 1058, 6153), Carver QFs (with 503, 359, 4607)
Mentor / Consultant Person: 2170 (2017-?)
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College Mentor: 2791 (2010-2015)
...2015 TVR Motorola Quality, FLR GM Industrial Design
...2014 FLR Motorola Quality / SFs (with 341, 4930)
...2013 BAE Motorola Quality, WPI Regional #1 Seed / Delphi Excellence in Engineering / Finalists (with 20, 3182)
...2012 BAE Imagery / Finalists (with 1519, 885), CT Xerox Creativity / SFs (with 2168, 118)
Student: 1714 (2009) - 2009 Minnesota 10,000 Lakes Regional Winners (with 2826, 2470)
2791 Build Season Photo Gallery - Look here for mechanism photos My Robotics Blog (Updated April 11 2014)
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