Swerve Drive vs Mecanum Wheel drive?

[Tyler2517]

As some one who has design, built, driven both of the two drives.

Swerve if done right is something that is amazing. It is something amazing to see it drive for the first time. Little lone ours is so much more reactive then the mecanum. I have by far learned the most when building out swerve then i have about anything else in robotics.Our swerve even though it is easily 50%-100% faster then last years mecanum drive can still plow it around all day long.

We had dome mecanum several times and after learning to drive on of those, our swerve is driven in exactly the same way so it was not that much getting use to.

I still do not know if i would chose to do swerve again. We spend 100s of hours just making the parts. That time could have been spend making a good manipulator. The swerve this year is our teams greatest strength and our greatest weakness.

Its all about risk V reward. Even though on the field a swerve should always trump a mecanum.