pic: Swerve^2 Prototype

[WakeZero]

Here is what we use to turn ONE set of wheels. We have one of these on the back two wheels, and one on the front. You can't see them in the picture because they are mounted upward, and hidden by the frame

I explained it in the picture description, but that doesn't show up in the discussion. So here it is again

Yes, it does drive on it's own power up the small steps. Right now we have one drill motor driving all four motors, this will eventually be two. To steer we use two globe motors, one for the front wheels and one for the back. This allows us to do two things:

A) Tank-turn by turning the front wheels 180 degrees from the back wheels. This allows us to change the robots orientation easily.

and

B) Change to a car drive mode where only the front wheels turn.

To drive the swerve, right now we have one joystick. In programming we convert the x and y coordinates to polar by using lookup tables. This gives us the angle we want the wheels to face, and then the magnitude for how fast we want to drive.