Has anyone made a swerve drive that's run on one motor?

[asid61]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Generally it is quite a bit more difficult to sync the steering rotation of the wheels if you use more than 1 motor to steer. Considering all you need is one good motor I just can't think of many good reasons to do it with multiple steering motors.

A few years ago FRC11 did steer a swerve drive with 2 steering motors. It did not end well but it did get a programming award trying to sort out the 'Tazmanian Devil' issues with steering and synchronizing 2 position targeted PID loops. It also pushed the limits of what we could pull off with Java on the cRIO because there were many motion control issues that had to be contended with.

Given the 6 week build window there would have to be a great reason to engage in these acrobatics instead of a simple piece of chain and one motor.

The reason you would use multiple turning motors is so that you can strafe and turn at the same time. If you chain all rotations together, you need to scrub when turning.

Crab drives use one motor to steer. I have never heard of a swerve drive module that uses the same motor to steer and turn the wheel.