Scouting Advice? FTC to FRC help?

[rs201496]

Thanks, this helped a lot. How about west coast/jump/swerve drive trains? Are there any others?

[xXhunter47Xx]

WCD is a 2 gearbox type of drivetrain.
Swerve drive is like an over complicated holonomic drive, although it does provide a more detailed driving experience and has a greater degree of movement as opposed to holonomic, it tends to be very pricey and difficult to program for.

[Canon reeves]

A lot of teams run tank drive, which is basically each side of the robot operates individually and most every team has atleast 4 CIM motors on their drive train, an quite a few have 6 causing for some very fast robots or some very powerful ones. If a team has a shifter than they can go from a gear ratio that is higher meaning more for speed, to a lower ratio for pushing power. I've seen teams do different things with tank however, one of my favorites is not dropping the center wheel and adding omni wheels on the outsides. The reason for dropping the center wheel lower than the others is so that when it is turning it is only turning on 4 wheels vs 6 causing much better turns.

[Abby341]

Tank drives often opt. for wheels with higher traction, their almost always round, nothing too special about them, they are better for pushing . Omni wheels are just round wheels with smaller wheels laying perpendicularly on the wheel it allows for easier turning. Mechanum wheels look like wheels are slicing into the larger wheel, they are supposed to make changing directions easier, they are the most obscure looking out of all the wheels. Drop center drives are fairly common, wheels are slightly lower in the middle making turning tighter.

[EricH]

A "jump" drive, as I recall, switches between two drive systems. The most common are the "octocanum" or "butterfly" drivetrains, which switch between a traction wheel and a mecanum wheel, or occasionally an omni wheel.

Just to give a little more detail into swerve or crab drive, there are a number of different subtypes, but in the interest of simplicity: the robot can go in any direction without turning. Some internal wheel-turning configurations can turn the robot, some cannot. Some require lots of chain, some do not.

And, to elaborate on West Coast Drive (WCD): A "true" WCD is 6WD, dropped center wheel directly driven from a 2-speed gearbox on each side, with chain runs to the outer wheels, and all wheels cantilevered outside of the frame. They've been used for over 10 years, and have been very effective the whole time. There are a number of variations and tweaks; the most common is to move the wheels inside of the frame and use chain drive on all of them. 8-wheeled WCDs have been cropping up as well.