Our team recently had almost 100% turnover. We have 2 returning sophomores and only one of our mentors was active last year.
Due to issues with our turnover and losing our facility, we were able to raise enough money to purchase swerve drive in time to test. Our current plan is to use mecanum as we had major issues lining up to score points with tank drive. Our belief is that it will be easier for us to use our Limelights with the April tags to line up using mecanum verse tank drive. We have a test bot with mecanum that we did work with in the Fall. We will be working to get in as much drive time as possible
Can anyone with experience with mecanum tell me if this is a terrible plan? .
I have experience with mecanum, my team has built one competition robot with them in 2015, and several off season projects. Currently we’ve got several FTC robots running them.
It’s really gonna depend on your team’s goals, which from your description sounds like might include being competitive.
Some games have a big advantage with omnidirectional movement and some do not. Last year really did. I think this year that will not be the case. There is not a narrow movement zone where super-precise alignment is necessary. Instead you have a pretty large goal and some hard stops (the SUBWOOFER) you can use for physical alignment.
While it may not be fair that teams will choose not to pick someone for having mecanum drive, it still is true that it often happens. If you want to make it into playoffs then it’s probably not a great choice for that reason alone. Good robots with mecanum get picked, but average tank robots get picked over average mecanum robots.
The kitbot this year looks like the best ever. The REV starter bot looks solid. Everybot is coming out next week. I would highly recommend using the AM14U drive base and building one of those options, then (like you said) get a lot of driver practice.
For my money, you should build a dead simple KOP robot and get your team a positive experience they can build on. This game is going to be fast and defense is likely. Any advantage you get out of moving sideways for amp alignment is going to be outweighed by being slower and having less pushing power. It’s micro-movement wise, and macro-movement foolish.
The perception your robot is bad is worse than actually being bad, and that reputation is well earned for mechanums in FRC. The last thing a team that barely survived the off-season needs is to go play well and not get picked because they built a mechanum bot.
Build a simple robot, drive it well, and get your team sparked on this program so they come back next year ready to go to the next level.
Regardless of the merits of mecanum drive, this statement alone tells me you should build the Kitbot presented by FIRST this year. It is quick and easy to build, comes with instructions, as well as code. With that as a great base, and all the resources posted by Rev starter bot, Robot in 3 Days such as Cranberry Alarm, and Everybot from 118, you can make something that will give your new kids a very positive experience this season by adding onto it.