Who is using swerve for aerial assist and why

To quote Cory McBride, mentor of Team 254: "Swerve is never necessary."

[ninjosh97]

K. I didn't really know what swerve was...

I think I understand now.

Yeah, some of my team mates want to do mecanum this year... but I'm going to try to convince them otherwise tonight.

Probably going tank drive. It's easy and effective.

Your right, traction is going to be a biggy this year.

[techtiger1]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

To quote Cory McBride, mentor of Team 254: "Swerve is never necessary."

That is a tough one to argue with. Traction would be the reason why swerve over mecanum, we are going with 8 wheels probably but I wanted to hear what CD had to say. I am however in favor of swerve being a good strategy this year and pushing the envelope as far as design so I can't say I wouldn't have liked to try swerve.

[Nemo]

True, swerve is never necessary. But if you're team 16, or 71, or 1717, or 1640, or some other team that has swerve pretty much down, you're probably liking your swerve drive right now. I think this would be a great year to be a team that already has a swerve drive well established.

[Steven Donow]

In my opinion, swerve is pretty much one of the most versatile drivetrains and almost always provides some form of advantage in the game each year, but the general rule of thumb (that I believe was present in 1114's strategy or drivetrain design presentation) is that if you've never done swerve before (either in offseason or regular season), don't do it. The 6 week build season is just not complementary at all to the designing, construction, and TESTING of a swerve drive.

[Gdeaver]

If you have not been playing with a swerve test bed the last month, then swerve is not for you. For teams that have done the prototyping it's still a soul searching decision. We are going with swerve again this year with some tweaks. Mill will probably start up on Thursday. The rush is on. Now the focus is on how to deal with the ball and save room for the UN-announced end game.

[JohnSchneider]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

save room for the UN-announced end game.

Please stop encouraging this

[TucoSalamanc]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

Please stop encouraging this

I am not sure why everyone is discouraging this. I believe this whole conspiracy thing is totally fake, however, no one can deny that it isn't teaching good principles. If teams are building at 75% weight, which many are, they are going to have a lot better time during the last week or so once they realize there is no endgame.

Having 20-30 pounds at the end to add support, add weights to balance, and still have a functioning robot will make crunch week a lot easier. The Team will be less stressed, judges will have an easier time, and you won't be cutting zipties to drop 1/10 lbs like we had to. Let people be misguided, it is making better, more flexible, teams.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by TucoSalamanc

I am not sure why everyone is discouraging this. I believe this whole conspiracy thing is totally fake, however, no one can deny that it isn't teaching good principles. If teams are building at 75% weight, which many are, they are going to have a lot better time during the last week or so once they realize there is no endgame.

Having 20-30 pounds at the end to add support, add weights to balance, and still have a functioning robot will make crunch week a lot easier. The Team will be less stressed, judges will have an easier time, and you won't be cutting zipties to drop 1/10 lbs like we had to. Let people be misguided, it is making better, more flexible, teams.

Please keep the discussion of this silly conspiracy theory to its respective thread in the Rumor Mill. I don't want to have to read about it in other threads.

[Keegbot]

Our team is heavily considering an octocanum drive where we can use the mecanum drive to maneuver ourselves into position to catch/chase the balls and use 4 normal wheels when we need to line up to shoot and not be pushed around. I'm not sure how many people have considered this because I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

[cad321]

Originally Posted by Keegbot

Our team is heavily considering an octocanum drive where we can use the mecanum drive to maneuver ourselves into position to catch/chase the balls and use 4 normal wheels when we need to line up to shoot and not be pushed around. I'm not sure how many people have considered this because I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

I too have been considering an octanum drive to great length and feel it would be the best of both worlds. My team does not have the time or experience with swerve mechanisms to develop one in 6 weeks, however we feel that being omni directional would help us a lot. By going with an octanum drive it challenges us opposed to the past 3-4 years of a standard tank setup without having to do something overly complex.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by cad321

I too have been considering an octanum drive to great length and feel it would be the best of both worlds. My team does not have the time or experience with swerve mechanisms to develop one in 6 weeks, however we feel that being omni directional would help us a lot. By going with an octanum drive it challenges us opposed to the past 3-4 years of a standard tank setup without having to do something overly complex.

Octocanum seems good too, but not as good as swerve. I like strafing for catching, and the defense is going to be trying to shove you when you are trying to catch. Octocanum can't strafe and have traction at the same time, but swerve can. But I still like Octocanum for this game for a team that can come up with one without sacrificing their ability to create a well-iterated set of scoring mechanisms.

[cad321]

Originally Posted by Nemo

Octocanum seems good too, but not as good as swerve. I like strafing for catching, and the defense is going to be trying to shove you when you are trying to catch. Octocanum can't strafe and have traction at the same time, but swerve can. But I still like Octocanum for this game for a team that can come up with one without sacrificing their ability to create a well-iterated set of scoring mechanisms.

Although it is true that you cannot have traction at the exact same time as you are strafing, once you are in position to catch it is just the push of a button and you have immense traction. I understand that it would be nice to have that traction 24/7, but for a team that doesn't have the ability to make a swerve, its gotta be the next best thing IMO.

[Tyler2517]

At the end of our season swerve both saved our team and destroyed it. We did not use that much machine time from our shop. We got funding for the development of the swerve drive alone. The biggest resorese draw was not machining or even programming but a few of our high performance students left to go machine it leaving the rest of the robot in a mad house. In the end it will leave a legacy of something much more advanced then ever before. Something to build on year in and year out.
I think we got farther with a working swerve then if we would have with a better manipulate. Plus the personal reward for completing it is something amazing.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

If you have not been playing with a swerve test bed the last month, then swerve is not for you. For teams that have done the prototyping it's still a soul searching decision. We are going with swerve again this year with some tweaks. Mill will probably start up on Thursday. The rush is on.

And finally a game made for swerve! Looking forward to seeing what the value engineering process does this year. And if you programming team makes the advances this year the way they did last year, it will be one sweet setup.

Now the focus is on how to deal with the ball and save room for the UN-announced end game.

You forgot the for the humor impaired....