paper: Bomb Squad Swerve Steering Code

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Jefferson

Ether's spreadsheet implements crab drive with the ability to change the orientation of the robot.

The spreadsheet implements Unicorn drive (four wheel independent unlimited steering and four wheel independent drive).

The Steer class implements a drive method similar to how a car drives... a car with 4-wheel steering anyway.

4 wheel steering is a subset of the vehicle motions available with the 3 degrees of freedom in the spreadsheet (forward/reverse, strafe left/right, rotate clockwise/counterclockwise).

In other words, 4-wheel steering can be described in terms of those 3 degrees of freedom.

For example, here's how Ackermann steering (standard auto front-wheel steering) can be described in terms of the 3 degrees of freedom.

So no matter what your operator interface is (4 wheel steering, Ackermann steering, or even tank-style steering), if you convert those operator-interface steering commands to the equivalent 3-degrees-of-freedom commands then you can duplicate it with the tester spreadsheet.