Strategic Uses of Swerve Drive

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

What thought process do you guys go through to determine if a swerve chassis has strategic benefit for a particular year?

Why don't you build a swerve every year? What are the drawbacks?

Have you ever regretted the choice to build a swerving chassis?

Any answers would be appreciated.

For our team we do a PRO/Con Analysis. In general we only attempt swerve if we really need aditional maneuverability. We thought we needed it in 2005, but ended up changing it to Fixed during the afternoon at our first competition due to stability issues (Swerve often has shorter wheelbase and/or track because the wheels have to fit inside the frame.

The maneuverability usually comes at a pretty significant weight, development time hit. It also usually means single speed which can cause a lack of pushing or top speed (due to singel gear). This year we new that traction limited the pushing issue, but it was difficult to add additional speed at the end of the year when we wanted it.

Incidentally 2005 and then this year were the only years I witnessed competitions where we did not get picked Saturday afternoon (GLR in 2005 and IRI in 2009).

I would highly recommend doing a crab as an off-season project to get some hands on lessons learned. You will gain a whole new level of admiration for those that successfully implement swerve drives (111, 71, 1625....).

Looking back, would we do it again? It all depends on the game.

BTW, the sheet metal construction technique was easy for the students to do, but required a lot of tweaking.