Overclocked's Rover Reveal

[Chris is me]

It's really cool to see people exploring fairly uncharted territory in FRC. There have been very few circular robots, and even fewer that incorporate a competitive swerve drive. Best of luck with further development on this endeavor and any resulting competition robots.

I certainly don't have the experience you're looking for here, but I do have some useless conjecture to contribute.

I think there is a decent argument for going faster, "beyond" a traction-limited gear ratio, for this base. The lack of turning scrub in almost all situations really reduces the amount of load you'll put on a battery and the need to slip wheels at low currents. (I think this is why a lot of 8-motor coaxial swerve designs have been popping up?) The circular design of the frame and the smooth sailcoth is going to make pushing a robot without rolling off very difficult, so initiating pushing matches is going to be difficult. As for pushing through defense, is that something this robot will ever have to do? It seems like the robot is purpose built to avoid pushing at all costs, finding a way to slip out of any pin. I'm not sure if the situations you need to brute force your way out of will happen enough to justify compromising the agility you use to avoid those defenders. Perhaps I'm not thinking enough about the various defensive scenarios this robot could encounter, such as being pinned in a corner or by multiple robots.

All that said, from what I have heard (again, little experience in swerve here) it's easiest to start swerve development at a lower top speed and inch things upward. And swerves can be agile and competitive at surprisingly low top speeds, relative to a standard drive needing to start and stop more often. So it's certainly an open question for debate. The Wild Swerve system has a variety of gear ratios for you to choose from, and if you incorporate Vex gears into the mix you can get even more flexibility, so I'm sure this is the kind of thing you'll play with and tune if you build this in-season.

I'm excited to see how this plays out in real matches, if you guys end up going with this design. Any idea how an arm or other manipulator would fit on top? Perhaps even a turreted one, if you're willing to go that complex?