Swerve Comments

[Bob Steele]

This is similar to our Skunkswerve this year. One thing you might think about is how you will achieve alignment when you are adjusting your pots...
We steer front and rear the same... our modules have holes drilled in them for alignmnet rods to be placed so all four wheels can be put exactly in alignment with each other so we can align our pots for control...

it is a simple thing to put the holes in during the manufacturing process... much harder to do it after the fact...

thanks to our design team... we put them in early... along with a hole for a chain tensioner... (but we didn't need it..)

Our drive is really a hybrid between crab and swerve... similar to what Al was talking about...

[Team1710]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

This is similar to our Skunkswerve this year. One thing you might think about is how you will achieve alignment when you are adjusting your pots...
We steer front and rear the same... our modules have holes drilled in them for alignmnet rods to be placed so all four wheels can be put exactly in alignment with each other so we can align our pots for control...

it is a simple thing to put the holes in during the manufacturing process... much harder to do it after the fact...

thanks to our design team... we put them in early... along with a hole for a chain tensioner... (but we didn't need it..)

Our drive is really a hybrid between crab and swerve... similar to what Al was talking about...

What do you mean by alignment rods?

[Bob Steele]

When we align the potentiometers that we use for the control algorithm we need to make sure all wheels are pointing exactly in the same direction. We do this by putting steel rods through holes in the swerve modules. These holes are drilled perpendicular to the module in two directions. We put 3 rods in and all the modules are lined up squarely with each other....all pointing the same direction... then we set the pot values to the same for each of them.

After this alignment we now have the same pot value for each wheel so that when the robot interface gets this feedback from the wheel it can keep each wheel facing in the same direction..

We also can, therefore use the calibration of the pots to change all wheels to face a different direction... or each wheel to face a different direction.

The alignment allows us to have an initial frame of reference for all the wheels..

I hope this helps you see what we are doing...

[big1boom]

We just visually lined up the wheelbox's.

[Team1710]

Yeah now I understand you. Yeah I'll take that into consideration. Thanks again for the help.