My team just prototyped a chassis with passive swerve. At first I was hesitant with their design choice, but then we realized there are a surprising amount of benefits to passive swerve: requires no motors or speed controllers so you can save money and weight, less complexity/failure points, and it still has the same mobility as active swerve drivetrains, albeit passively. The only real downside to passive swerve that we could think of is that the drivers and programmers would have no way to influence the movement of the robot during a match. I’m curious, is anyone else considering a passive swerve robot this year? Do you think it could be a viable option? Here are some photos of the prototype.
Careful design of other mechanisms could alleviate this. A roller intake could be designed so that the roller touches the ground and can be used to move the robot. Another option would be including a trained monkey on the robot which could push like it’s on a skateboard, although it would need to be taught not to violate the extension limit.
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YAGSL supports this type of configuration and its the easiest one yet!
Just don’t import it.
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As a reminder from the 2023 season: the monkey, as a non-COTS part, has to be manufactured after kickoff. This is rather difficult.
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Our team built one up and it has been working wonders!
Sure the ability to move is useful, but it has been done without before. Just chain a bunch of motors and 2009 your way to the chain and trap climb! I think its certainly viable, and the drive practice you can achieve with little effort is amazing. The cost is also too hard to pass up! Now if you really want to push it, the Passive power situation may be viable too!
And the best part? Harbor Freight sells a full chassis for 17.99!
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Ok, so I know this is a joke, but…
…This robot could be an insanely cool part of an alliance. Imagine a tiny robot that attaches to the fastest powerhouse team there, with its only purpose to hang onto a game piece so that the powerhouse can run cycles of 2 game pieces at a time instead of just 1. That would be worth a freaking lot.
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Would dragging a teammate who is in control of a note not be considered controlling 2 notes? G409B does include the “either directly or transitively” clause.
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Ok ya’ll, I call asking the QA about this one, no one else gets to take it from me
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Nah, that rule is about who builds it. Even if said robot didn’t have a major mechanism, the other team didn’t build it for you, so it doesn’t violate that rule. Now, someone tries to hand you that as your robot, that’s a different story.
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Which game challenge does that accomplish?
Moving the robot around the field of course. (/j)
i thought you were serious until i read this part
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This is hardly a downside. We programmers are used to blaming the mechanical team when we fail to influence the movement of the robot during the match.
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We only have funds for one set of swerve modules so we printed out 4 surrogates matching the arrangement volume, height, and connections of the real things for a prototyping chassis.
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4 BLDC powered intake. LET’S GO!
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Think of the defense opportunities!
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The Vortexes are the rollers?