User Interface - Drivetrain Controls

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Siri

we're still experimenting with how best to control the additional DoFs. We currently have crab and snake drives, a center twist and a ball pivot. Mechanically we can handle automobile and tank drive, absolute and relative crab twists, and X-bias snake as well. None of us, including the drive team, is really sure how to most efficiently and intuitively present all this to the driver.

Nice looking design!

The driver presentation problem for your 4-wheel independent swerve is no different from the driver presentation problem for a 4-wheel mecanum or 4-wheel omni.

On a flat surface, your drive cannot perform any vehicle motions that the mecanum or omni cannot. All three vehicles have the same three degrees of freedom: 2 translational and one rotational. So the driver presentation is the same.

So the good news is, you can ask around to see if any teams with mecanum or omni vehicles have developed interesting and intuitive driver presentations, and if so you can borrow from that. And vice-versa: if your team develops a unique and intuitive driver presentation, any team with mecanum or omni can do the same if desired.

The other good news is, your drive has the potential for significantly better maximum vehicle traction than mecanum or omni (because of the physics of how they work and how the floor reaction forces are directed).

Even though the driver presentation is the same, the algorithms to convert the driver inputs to wheel speed (and angle in the case of your drive) are completely different problems. The bad news is, these algorithms are probably more complex for a swerve drive since both wheel speed and wheel angle must be carefully coordinated and tightly controlled.

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