Best Drive Train

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by peirvine

The only addition I would make to your drive base would be the addition of a strafe wheel in the center of your robot. You had the right idea with the butterfly drive, its pretty much a Jump Drive, but in order to make better use of your omni's I would have put a strafe wheel in the middle, otherwise you would have been better off just building a multi speed gearbox. Don't get me wrong, I love your butterfly concept, in fact, our team my try it out this summer, but you need to have a strafe wheel if you have omni's.

I think when 148 does this they actually gear both wheels to be the same speed, so they can set front to traction and rear to omni, or vice versa. This allows them to move their center of rotation so they can slide around easier. Watching them drift around the pyramid was really cool, and I had multiple kids ask me how they did that. I wish JVN's blog was still up so I could show them more.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by peirvine

The only addition I would make to your drive base would be the addition of a strafe wheel in the center of your robot. You had the right idea with the butterfly drive, its pretty much a Jump Drive, but in order to make better use of your omni's I would have put a strafe wheel in the middle, otherwise you would have been better off just building a multi speed gearbox. Don't get me wrong, I love your butterfly concept, in fact, our team my try it out this summer, but you need to have a strafe wheel if you have omni's.

not really much point when you are going to strafe much slower than your forward speed. They probably prefer saving the weight and complexity of adding the omni. It's actually very different then a multi speed gearbox. When they push down their outer for wheels it is impossible to turn them which is very helpful for auton, playing defense, and getting through defense.

[stoutman777]

Definitely 1625's lobster drive from 2011. That's my favorite.

[Mykey]

Obviously there is no "Best" drive train. There is only best for you.

We went with what we dubbed the "Chicken Drive". It is a 6wd tank drive with super shifters. What made it distinctive was redundant chains. We actually busted a drive chain in Newton qualifiers but kept running. Using pneumatic shifters was also very useful. We saw people at regionals trying to shift with servos and that meant they had to basically come to a full stop to do so.

[Rangel]

Definitely not the best drivetrain but a very very good one is this year's KOP Belt Drivetrain. We decided to go with it this year to spend more time on our different mechanisms. It took roughly 2-3 hours to put together and after we assembled it we never had to worry about it again. The built in belt tensioners worked great and once tightened we never had any problems with the drivetrain itself. Being able to not worry about the drivetrain at competition was a luxury we never had before. I would also like to point out just how robust it was. We could go head to head with some of the best drivetrains in frc. Fast, enough traction to not get pushed around, and very robust. Thank you Andymark!

[Clem1640]

We are big fans of swerve as a drive-train well suited to a wide variety of FRC situations. The ability to vector drive force in any desired direction is particularly valuable. So is the independence between chassis orientation and direction of movement. Some moves are shown in the attached link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pej5pkFvFdY

Swerve does "cost" more. We use 4 drive and 4 steering motors and the overall weight of four pivot modules is 31.6 lb (includes all motors). Also, there is a significant investment in driver training. Despite this cost, we find that the benefits that this versitile drive-train provides to us in competition makes it worthwhile.

[Jared Russell]

Given infinite time, money, motor selection, programming ability, manufacturing ability, and driver practice time...swerve.

The more of those assumptions you relax, the more attractive plain old tank drive starts looking.

[cadandcookies]

I would say the best drive train is this:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...shed%2C+around

I mean, look at that-- robust, light, simple...

[42!]

Don't forget about the fact it can travel over 100 fp/s

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by Siri

I have never seen an omni robot exhibit actual holonomic drive--full control of orientation while translating along any vector.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2013wase2_qf2m2

[Siri]

Originally Posted by SoftwareBug2.0

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2013wase2_qf2m2

Thanks. I see you doing some cool driving in what amounts to crab and 1983 doing some pretty awesome spins, but I don't see anyone obviously taking advantage of full holonomic movement. Maybe I just can't pick out the level of control from match video--do you have like a practice demo or something?

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by Siri

Thanks. I see you doing some cool driving in what amounts to crab and 1983 doing some pretty awesome spins, but I don't see anyone obviously taking advantage of full holonomic movement. Maybe I just can't pick out the level of control from match video--do you have like a practice demo or something?

I don't think we have a demo video put together showcasing the movement. I do have an onboard camera view though, which makes it more obvious when we are and aren't turning. If you skip to about 0:53 you'll see the robot both turning to point towards the goal and lining up with the feeder station by backing up in a weird direction. This is the same match as before, by the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD57jowaBwM

[NXTGeek]

Ask your driver wether he/she'd want to drive and practice with it.
Ask your programmers wether they'd be willing to program it.
Ask your scouts wether they blacklist drivetrains like that
Not necessarily in that order. This goes with a drivebase ranking system.