pic: Final 2011 Drivetrain

[SudoSammich]

I'd have to agree with luke on this one, swerve drive seems a bit ambitious for a rookie team, especially a rookie team with only four weeks of the build left. 5 axis CNC aside, you still need to be able to accurately assemble, program and learn to drive one of, if not the most, complicated drive system usually attempted in FRC.

It's possible, I suppose, but at that point I'd imagine the professional mentors you have would be doing more of the work than the students, as a rookie team's students generally wouldn't be able to accomplish such a feat. While I've seen rookie teams compete at the top levels of our regional in the past, it was due to the simpler, more solid mechanisms that worked well together and a good driver. Additionally, by the sound of it you haven't really started to BUILD your robot if you're still working on CAD sketches at this point, and that's no small undertaking. Best of luck if you try to pull it off, but I'd be very cautious to first look at a crab system two weeks into the season.

P.S. 2.2 seconds on the minibot? I remember seeing that a 5 lb minibot utilizing ALL the power from a tetrix motor (i.e. no loss in the system, which is just a wee bit impossible) would climb in 6.5 or so. Conservative estimates from that landed a competitive minibot at 7 seconds. It's entirely possible I'm not remembering the thread correctly, but 2.2 still seems a bit extreme.