pic: 4143 differential swerve concept

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Mechanically elegant - essentially just two nano style gearboxes and an idle thrust bearing.
However, presuming two drive trains and rotation is obtained by spinning the wheels at different speeds, you would probably need three encoders per module. One would be for each wheel and a third to measure rotation, as rotation is likely to drift considerably from the difference in rotation of the wheels.

I love the idea (seriously awesome) but encoders are the least of its problems. I think the motor controllers are going to bed in a constant, losing battle to keep the module pointed straight, as one wheel picks up more traction than the other, and as the whole bot gets pushed around sideways.

That said, you could get away with two encoders, since there's only two axes of control. One on the motor, and one on the steering spindle. The second motor would just be driven at a percent power of the first. You'd probably want three encoders for redundancy anyway, but even that won't compensate for the lack of direct steering control imo.