AM' swerve modules

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by HighLife

There are many teams that don't have the ability to make their own serve modules. I think this would be a great way to even out the playing field.

Swerve is an advantage. This year my team found it be quite useful to have in tricky situations. Swerve bots, when turning or moving can more easily evade. When your wheels are actuated, it helped keep traction as opposed to skidding.

That said...most years I have observed that swerve doesn't offer as much of an advantage as it appears. I have seen "cool" swerve bots put to shame by skid steer bots with experienced driving. Swerve is also generally a little heavier than skid steer. This can take away from weight on the manipulator. Remember, you win when you score, and you score with your manipulator, not your drivetrain. Swerve is creative however and can win lots of awards. If people had modules made for them, they likely wouldn't get an award. Swerve is cool to toy with in the offseason, but if you look at the winning robots, they very rarely do they have swerve. (yes...Wildstang you are amazingly awesome). All I'm trying to say is that swerve will not really help all that much to make someone better, you are pretty much just as well of with skid steer. Teams with skid steer are no worse off than teams with swerve, so honestly I don't think giving people the ability to do swerve will help the playing field be evened. Swerve is a good learning experience when building and it gets awards, but the competitive edge just isn't really there. True swerve can do a little more than skid, but it can't really do as much as it appears to. (sorry for this rant, don't mean it against any teams with swerve, as there are some very good and competitive teams with swerve, it is more of a personal opinion. It's more that my team has this idea that our goal is to make as "cool" and complicated bot as possible and I think the coolest robot is the one that is simple and wins). Honestly, I don't think it would be a bad idea if AM made swerve modules, I think it'd be kind of cool to give more teams the option of doing swerve.