Swerve vs. Mech?

[Bob Steele]

Be very wary of doing anything with mecanum or any type of omni-wheels this year. Two big reasons....

The Ramp...

and Traffic ...

Omni wheels are easy for a team to push around...

As someone said before... all drive trains are trade-offs and they take lots of resources... this year the question will be does a team dare to use omniwheels even if they don't go on the ramps.?..

I think there is going to be huge amount of pushing around on the field this year... especially in the midfield...

if you are using Omnis in a 4 wheel drive put them on the back and then you might be able to go up the ramp... just be really careful when you are coming down the other side... its just so easy to slide sideways with omni wheels...

You will have to be aligned pretty square to the ramp to try it... and hope that no other robot comes along to push you sideways...

My suggestion is you need to power all the wheels... you are going to need the pushing ability... but of course the trade off of using sticky wheels all around is going to be loss of turning control...

so perhaps wheels with a medium amount of traction all around say a coefficient of friction of .75-.8 ... you could turn easier...

Get a variety of wheels and see what you can do...

You can use really sticky wheels if you do a swerve... mechanically they are not extremely difficult...the programming is the hard part...

Don't be set back about the design... we designed our Skunk Swerve last year AFTER the kickoff...

if you need some help .... we are not far away from you guys!!
We can help!!

Good luck