Below I have provided an overview detailing our swerve drives for the years 2009-2012:
2009
This was the first year that we decided to use a swerve drivetrain. Our drivetrain was split down the middle of the robot. On the left side, both of the drive wheels were paired together and powered by 1 CIM motor through a single speed belt reduction that used timing pulleys. The left wheels were also paired together for turning. The turning was powered by a banebots RS-545 though a banebots planetary transmission.
The right side of the robot was a mirror image of the left side.
2010
The drive for the wheels were again coupled together in pairs. Both of the left wheels were driven together and both of the right wheels were driven together. To power this drive, each pair of wheels was powered by two CIM motors through a two-speed transmission that was a re-packaged AM supershifter gear-set with some custom modifications.
For turning, the front left and back right wheels were paired together and the front right and back left wheels were paired together. This enabled both translational motion in any direction and rotation of the robot about its origin when it was not translating. Each turning pair was powered by a single fisher price motor through our custom gearbox with purchased gears.
2011
The wheel pairings were the same as in 2010, but the turning motors were banebots RS-775 motors.
Our drive transmissions were custom two-speed transmissions that were optimized for our swerve system. The turning transmissions were custom as well. Also, we cut all of our gears in house and they were made from steel.
2012
In 2012, our drivetrain consisted of four independent wheel modules. Each wheel module’s drive was powered by one CIM motor with a two-speed custom gearbox. Our wheel module’s turning was powered by a single banebot RS-550 with a custom transmission. All of our gears were made from aluminum and they were cut in house.
In an upcoming post we will provide some pictures of the 2012 modules and describe them a little more thoroughly.