As more and more swerve drive types have reached us off the shelf, I’m curious what type of swerves people like the most and why. Lemme know what you think is the best swerve and if you don’t think one is better than the other, lemme know that too!
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I’d be curious to how many responders have used more than a single type
We’ve used several. I think a future of compact modules like the Max from REV is a good thing, I just think it needs some refinement (mostly to the wheels) but I’d build a kitbot around it if I were in charge. SDS makes great products and they are more mature.
My team has used the Mk4s, Mk4is, as well as Andymark swerve and steer. We never built a competition robot with the Andymark modules, and they collected dust until we got our hands on Mk4s last season. After competing with the Mk4is we prefer the Mk4is to the Mk4s because they are easier to service, bring your CoG lower to the ground, bring motors below the bumpers, and are overall just a fantastic swerve module.
The only issue my team faced with the REV MAX swerve is the wheels. Other than that, they worked great. Our solution was making a 3D printed TPU tread to attach to the aluminum wheel substitutes. (Later replaced with another type of tread) Our lead mentor spoke with a representative of REV at their booth at Champs, and they were very interested in solutions teams had come up with. They are also changing their manufacturing process behind them for next year, but these are the most in-depth details that I know as of now relating to future versions of their swerve products.
our team has a Inverted Shifting Swerve: 4265 Inverted Shifting Swerve CAD
we haven’t posted the latest version yet and will make significant improvements before next season.
Standard warning: favorites among CD community might not be the favorites among the broader FRC community. For some reason this group has a few quirky biases. 
We previously had our own custom swerve design that we had fielded from 2017 through 2022. So our criteria for selecting COTS swerve was perhaps a little bit different than other teams may have used (i.e. it had to provide advantages over our own in-house design and had to integrate well with out own in-house code methodologies). Also, since we already understood the mechanical aspects of swerve modules in terms of assembly, maintenance and potential failure modes, we were perhaps a bit more informed of what to look for as we went through the selection process. We concluded that both the SDS and SwerveX modules were very good designs and honestly, the choice between the two came down to availability more than any real technical advantages. Of course that evaluation and selection was done before the REV MAXSwerve was announced. Although we love what REV has done, I’m not sure we would have changed our minds simply because the REV design was unproven. I would also say that the 3" wheel on the REV module is probably a disadvantage on our decision matrix given our own experience with the bumps on the 2020 field. But the REV design does have several advantages (size and weight) over the other competitors that might tip the scale.
We really like the Swerve X over SDS, we have run both of them and Swerve X is easier to maintain than SDS
You mention 2017 through 2022, but since the topic of the thread is favorite swerve drives, I will point out that 1533’s 2016 swerve is still my personal favorite swerve drive of all time. Still remember being in awe the first time our team watched your reveal vid, and then of course watching you rack up banners throughout the season.
That robot used the 221 Robotics Revolution modules. We also used those modules in 2015 as well. After those two seasons we were hooked on swerve, and spent the 2016 off-season developing our own module design.
Edit: By the way, that robot is still driving around today and is our primary demo robot.
Edit2: I found a picture of the Revolution module that I took after disassembling our 2015 robot a couple years ago for anyone interested in this piece of history. You will notice that the “R” in the Revolution logo looks like the Robonauts font. This was because this design was developed by 118 before 221 started producing it as a COTS module:
We have kept this module as well as the various iterations of our custom modules and created a display case in our build space with some history of 1533’s swerve adventure. It is always fun to show and tell our history with swerve with new members of the team.
[Non-swerve team observation]
Only saw one robot up close at champs with MAXSwerve, but it was crazy how open their chassis/bellypan was. So much space!
Speaking with kids on the team, they loved the modules, but felt the 3" wheels could have some serious limitations if the playing field had larger barriers to cross.
andymark swerve n steer anyone? our team had the modules for years but we were only able to integrate it in 2023. we swapped the cim motor for a neo and used magnetic axis encoders instead of the $60 usdigital ma3.
the height of these modules actually proved beneficial for the charge station, but hopefully height will not be needed as we are replacing them with mk4i
When we picked which module to get for our off season swerve, i really wanted to pick up the MAXSwerve, but the only available was the L1 Mk4i. The Mk4is are really nice, but the compact size and amount of instructional material and swerve code from Rev make it seem way more approachable for a team new to swerve. And the cost is much better.
For reference, we received our Mk4is back in late April and had a chassis made and wired by early May (using Neos and Cancoders). Our small programming team that was working on the swerve code just finally got it working correctly. I separately tried to use YAGSL to test it out, but it just flailed around and my very basic programming knowledge couldn’t help me figure it out. Maybe we would have had the same issue with the MAXSwerve, but based on the official support available I’m assuming we wouldn’t have had as many issues.
#longliveWCD
In all seriousness though, my favorite swerve would have to be the custom swerve that FTC 14486 designed and built in 2019 for Skystone - 3D-printed modules and everything! I’m definitely biased because I was a part of that.
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