The wheel module design this year was completely new. The new motor allowance for this year allowed us to build independent swerve drive without sacrificing power for other mechanisms. We designed the module during this build season as rookie seniors. It took about 2000 man hours to both design and fabricate 10 wheel modules (4 for the official robot, 4 for the practice robot, and 2 spares). The fabrication process of the modules was quite time-consuming and tedious.
On average, we seniors put in about 500 hours during the robotics season. Some of us, including the programmers and drivers, exceeded 750 hours during the robotics season. We are able to dedicate this much time to robotics because we are in our second semester with a light course load. Also, we only get one opportunity to do this awesome competition so we are extremely excited and dedicated to building our robot!