pic: 2015, Year of swerves?

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by asid61

I thought that graph was pretty accurate.
Anyway, many swerves may not be built for 2015. 2016 will have more swerve drives IMO.

Well, "swerve is never necessary" is like "moving is never necessary". You can sit still for a whole match with blinking lights and compete with that. Great. However, it's probably advantageous to move a little bit at least.

That argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I can think of several counterexamples, but I would rather you reword the post because I think you might have meant something else...I assure you as a driver myself that swerve is never necessary, whereas moving is. The best drivetrain is the one that gets you from point A to B the quickest, and if that drivetrain for you is swerve, then that works out nice. But for a lot of teams, it seems like a standard tank drive accomplishes that goal just fine.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by asid61

I thought that graph was pretty accurate.
Well, "swerve is never necessary" is like "moving is never necessary". You can sit still for a whole match with blinking lights and compete with that. Great. However, it's probably advantageous to move a little bit at least.

I'm going to agree wholeheartedly with that last sentence, which is why I would strongly recommend to any team NOT to use swerve. I've witnessed veteran teams (including my former team) sit still for entire matches because of problems exclusive to swerve.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by asid61

Well, "swerve is never necessary" is like "moving is never necessary". You can sit still for a whole match with blinking lights and compete with that. Great. However, it's probably advantageous to move a little bit at least.

Of course I disagree with the idea that swerve is as essential as moving itself. However, I'm going to guess you mean that in a rhetorical sense- that both are broad generalizations. There many factors that decide the success of a robot, and trying to categorize success based on the drivetrain is pointless.
Many of the swerves that came out of 2014 are some of the best ever made, and therefore swerve gained a lot of popularity (and rightfully so, looking at you 2451). Why did we see a lot of good swerve? Because 2014 was a great game for it, and some teams have been developing a swerve for years, waiting for the opportunity to use it. Did a swerve drive win champs? No. Why? Because other robots defeated the swerve bots.
The fact is, there is no "best drivetrain." These broad generalizations like "ALWAYS USE TANK" and "SWERVE IS BETTER THAN TANK" are invalid because they attribute the success of a robot to one small aspect of the robot. Sure, the drivetrain is important, but its significance is nothing compared to everything else that goes into making a successful robot. The success of a robot is determined by every component, every design, every man-hour, every line of code, and every strategic discussion contributed to it; all of these factors are what make a robot successful, not just the drivetrain.

To respond more directly to OP, there's a lot of of post-2014 swerve hype, but it all comes down to what happens this weekend.

[hzheng_449]

Originally Posted by Thad House

with all the COTS options I could see alot of teams doing it.

While the COTS swerve modules certainly have made *machining* a swerve as simple (if not simpler) than machining a WCD, the mechanism is only part of swerve.

In order to get the full benefits of swerve (or really any omni direction drive for that matter), you really need to be able to implement a good control scheme that is exponentially more difficult to do than a control scheme for WCD.

Also as a side note: I think that some of the initially negative posts about swerve on this thread we're saying "Swerve is useless", but were saying "A lot of teams are going to underestimate the challenge of implementing swerve during build season and will subsequently not have functional/effective drive bases come competition time". (Disclaimer: That's just my interpretation and I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth)

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ainsworth

Can you say that about a tank drive?

A skid-steer drivetrain does not necessarily have to have a tank drive interface.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Chadfrom308

A lot of people are bagging on swerve, but in all honesty, I think people who do swerve will be able to move. I have seen a lot of offseason projects, so if they programmed it and tested it and created offseason drivetrains, I think they will do just as well as anyone else.

To extend my opinion, I think that swerve is most of the time not necessary. If a team doesn't have resources and does swerve, then they are going to sacrifice game / end effectors.

Leading up to the 2011 season, 2220 did two full swerve iterations. We still didn't move for a regional and a half.

That said, I think the resources available for teams to do swerve are ininitely better than they were then.

I'll be interested to see how many swerves pop up for the 2015 season.

[IronicDeadBird]

Unicycles are hip I think those have a fair shot too

[matthewdenny]

Originally Posted by magnets

It's your responsibility that your entry to the FIRST Robotics Competition be your team's best competitive entry. If you decide that swerve is the best thing for your team, and it turns out to be unreliable, I might think you made a silly, but understandable, mistake. If you realize that swerve will lower both your rankings, and the rankings of those who must play with you, and you still decide to build it, it reflects poorly on your team.

Sorry, I disagree. As a teacher my responsibility to my students is to teach them new things. Now I'm sure that someone could make different iterations of the same type drive each year and learn something. I however try to have my team do at lease 1 thing every year that is completely new. That may or may not be a swerve.

As a mentor my responsibility is to inspire the students. How many times have we heard that it's not about the robot? If my students look at the game and say "a swerve would be really cool this year" we are going to give it a shot.

We may fail. We have before. In that case we will try a contingency plan. It may fail too. In the situation that we become a hindrance in someone's team for the 2 min match, honestly we'd be sorry, but we aren't going to try to limit our ambition during a 6 week build season because of it. I think doing that would reflect more poorly on us.

[dradel]

Something does get lost in the competition aspect of frc! It is a fact that can't be argued. I take that back... It can be argued for the sake of arguing it.

How many students join a robotics program with their sole intention is to win a competition?? I'd be willing to bet that the number is near zero.

[dradel]

Originally Posted by Dunngeon

Aren't you doing the exact same thing when t-boning a robot? I honestly think you're putting too much stock in the x formation, it's not as great as you make it out to be. It's potentially a slight bonus, not a primary one.
Edit: Travis beat me to it

Also, if a team is using PID control on the modules it's nearly impossible to rotate the caster with outside forces.



I don't like losing... I joined our team because I wanted to win anything, awards or robots. Robots that look cool but lose ( as in don't play the game well) aren't inspiring to me.

There is a big difference between not liking to lose, and know how to lose and learning from it. Those that get all pissy when they lose are going to find the "real world" hard to handle!

[matthewdenny]

Originally Posted by Pault

I find it strange that people in this thread are not impressed by clean, efficient, well engineered robots. Creativity and producing the best, most capable robot design, although important, isn't always the mark of great engineering. Sometimes it is taking a fairly standard design and making it better than every other implementation. For a real life example, think about cars. Although having many features in a car is nice, what really seperates low end cars from high end cars is build quality.



So with that being said, I don't think a competitive robot can be "boring", because to me the best robots are the ones built to be the most competitive.

Diffrent people are inspired by different things. Do what is an inspiration to you and your team, and regardless the outcome on the field you can never lose.

[MrForbes]

it's interesting that this thread disappeared before kickoff...and it turns out that the 2015 game is one that really needs swerve drive