Castor/Swerve Drive

[karomata]

One of the problems of the drive train your talking about, is that in our appliances, we usually don't incorporate the suspension system the Mars Rover has, so if you found a way to make a dropcenter swerve drive that could tackle bumps like the barrier in the 2012 game, i believe it would become very popular very quickly.
As long as its simple.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by karomata

One of the problems of the drive train your talking about, is that in our appliances, we usually don't incorporate the suspension system the Mars Rover has, so if you found a way to make a dropcenter swerve drive that could tackle bumps like the barrier in the 2012 game, i believe it would become very popular very quickly.
As long as its simple.

Look up Winnovation's 2010 swerve, all six wheels of it.

It's still the only 6-wheel swerve to compete in FRC. Swerve by definition isn't simple... and adding an extra 2 wheels doesn't help.

Most of the time a 4-wheel (or even 3-wheel) swerve is used, the field is flat. But, this year, several teams used swerve and also crossed the barrier without using the bridges (and then balanced the bridges).

[Secretspy97]

If you DO want to go with Swerve, there are a few decisions you have to make. Namely, motor allocation. You could go with each module steered by its own motor, or you could chain a few together (2 and 2). That's how 1126 did their prototype chassis. That turned into 2 and 1 and 1 for Championships (2 chained together, 2 are independently driven). Now they are working to make it totally independent. I'm not exactly sure what the advantage is to making it all independent, but I'd imagine the modules would rotate faster and easier. It's also heavier and a little more complicated. So keep that in mind.

We changed from 2 pairs of wheels being rotated by one window motor to all four wheel being rotated separately because it would allow the robot to turn more efficiently. When the wheels are connected together and you try to spin the robot, two of the four wheels are dragged on the carpet. This both damaged the carpet and we had to change the wheels tread often in order to have enough grip to climb the bridge.

[connor.worley]

Originally Posted by EricH

Swerve by definition isn't simple

Truth. If you have some members who are stuck on the idea of swerve, tell them to design one. They'll quickly see that it's not as easy as they think.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

Truth. If you have some members who are stuck on the idea of swerve, tell them to design one. They'll quickly see that it's not as easy as they think.

Though also remind them that the design is less than half the battle. Programming a swerve is the hardest part.

[Garret]

Truth. If you have some members who are stuck on the idea of swerve, tell them to design one. They'll quickly see that it's not as easy as they think.

Designing a module is a relatively straight forward challenge with all the CAD out there. A better challenge would be to price one out on a small budget, swerve gets expensive fast.

[Walter Deitzler]

Originally Posted by EricH

Look up Winnovation's 2010 swerve, all six wheels of it.

It's still the only 6-wheel swerve to compete in FRC. Swerve by definition isn't simple... and adding an extra 2 wheels doesn't help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7sXWhHfULs

They get a shot of all 6 wheels at 1:45. Its crazy cool.