pic: SimSwerve Omnidirectional Drive System

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Tytus Gerrish

i forget, who was it who said Simple is good? not to mention... inexpensive.

OH!, i remember... EVERYBODY!

Simple is good. There's no denying that. When this season started, we knew had the resources and the talent to build a more complex drive system. If everyone took the simple approach, we never would have seen shift on the fly transmissions or strafing robots in FIRST. These leaps in technology took place because teams were willing to take the risk to innovate.

One the more inspiring parts of FIRST for me, is seeing all sorts of cool innovations. It's partly why I come back every year. So when we had the chance to design and implement something new, I was completely behind the idea. I figured that we had enough experienced people, that if SimSwerve was a failure, we could quickly put together a simple alternative.

This is coming from someone who abhors complexity more than the average bear. I think it's very important for teams to work within their means, and keep things simple. On the other hand, if you've got access to good machine shop, have some great engineers and some sharp students, maybe it's time to try something new.