Pneumatic Wheel Swerve

[jkelleyrtp]

On our team's list of goals to achieve, we obviously wanted to be able to cross the defenses, but also align properly in the limited space in the neutral zone. We really want to do pneumatic wheels to get over the rough terrain, but swerve to navigate easier and lock our wheels in for shots.

So how does a pneumatic wheel swerve sound? I put together a little something in CAD to illustrate the concept. I forgot to disable the transparency on the sprockets in the first image, but the second one shows it.

"Why is the sprocket so big?" you ask. One of our mentors considered traditional modules to experience significant loads when on just a few wheels and unable to hold up. I attempted to mitigate this problem by using a slotted delrin ring strapped onto the bottom the tube. This helps by having a grove to keep the module in place as well as distributing load on around 15 square inches of slick plastic.

So what do you think? I tried to keep the complexity down so only 4 gears per module and versaplanteries with encoders to turn the modules. Would this be too complicated or just outright unable to work?

Also is there a better way of turning the modules without adding another 4 motor controllers?