I perceive there are some teams that will do swerve no matter what… 2910 comes to mind.
Yet, there are games like 2016 and 2010 involving uneven terrain. Six years separated those games, and this will be seven years after 2016, so one could argue we’re due.
My assumption is… those “swerve no matter what” teams have designs, at least conceptual ones, waiting in the wings for how they’ll manage to do swerve on a severely non-flat field. My question to you… What do you think it’d take? Bigger wheels? Track somehow? Suspension?
It’s going to happen some year (& I know plenty are hoping it’s not this year ), but when it happens, what are these all-terrain swerves going to look like?
One thing I think they take into account when design a game is that teams with a kitbot chassis need to be able to tackle the game without significant drivetrain modifications. For 2016 the field has rough terrain aspects but a good swerve with good auto can probably use the low bar for auto and do a two ball auto, run many ball cycles, and tackle non rough terrain defenses (portcullis, cheval de frise, drawbridge, sally port).
If the game absolutely needs it and swerve is out, We will drag out the tank treads and the old cad. The tank bot in 2016 was the only year we didn’t do swerve and that tank bot was fun to drive.
If 2016 happened again, we would look hard at cranking out a 6" or 8" pneumatic wheel swerve module. Probably brushless motor in wheel with slip rings.
Those look like 4" rigid wheels. Bomb Squad was able to go over all the defenses, even the Rock Wall. We played them at Rocket City, but I don’t have pit scouting notes with any swerve module details.
This design worked together with a decision to only go over the defenses “forward”. There was no need to have ramps for going over the defenses sideways.
Some teams used much smaller, but 4-way ramps to help swerve deal with the relatively tame obstacle of the Boundaries in Infinite Recharge.
Our fellow Tennessee team, 4265, took advantage of their world-class manufacturing support to modify SDS MK2 modules to run 5" pneumatic wheels for handling the Infinite Recharge boundaries.
I was the mentor for the design team on 3419 that came up with the 8” pneumatic swerve in 2016. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if the game called for it, although I’d probably tweak the design a bit based on lessons learned that year.
We’ve also used 5” and 6” pneumatic wheels (just like those pictured above) when the field had a less severe obstacle on it. The big problem with those, though, is that you need to manufacture your own hubs. The geometry required is difficult (you need to account for the roundness of the inner tube, a place to put the tube nozzle, etc.). It is doable with 2.5 dimension machining, though, if you design it as split rims. We were actually planning on using 3D printed hubs for 2020, and they worked fine on our prototype robot, but they never saw a real competition because of Covid.
An obstacle course would cause Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth, Rending of team Garments…and some great innovation. Bring it.
If we had to revert to a kit bot we’d park the swerve until next season and be very prepared for same. Our rookie year we built a pretty decent barrier crosser and figure we could pull it off again.
It will largely depend on the nature of the terrain. The 2016 terrain had a lot of variety, so it required a very general ability to handle that terrain. Of course you did not need to handle all the outer works if you did not want to. 1533’s swank drive mounted the tank treads about 1/4" above the carpet when we were driving on the flat floor. The treads would carry the robot over the terrain. The swerve wheels would, in fact, contact the terrain as the robot went over, but would not get caught. Many of the other concepts that year were also focused on making sure the swerve wheels did not get caught on the terrain. Those concepts would all work on many terrain types.
If the terrain is something with less variety (for example a bunch of 2016 “rock wall” barriers scattered around the field that were all the same height) then you might opt for something with a bit more specificity for that obstacle such as an extra wheel in one part of the drive base that would lift the front of the robot to clear the wall and then drop it back down on the other side.
I was looking again at 4143’s 2016 bot Sir Twerve’alot, and I’m wondering if anyone knows what kind of “tread” belts are used that are part of the each swerve module and make contact with the carpet? I think it would be interesting to design a version of this module with today’s parts (maybe Neo drive / Neo550 steer).
), but when it happens, what are these all-terrain swerves going to look like?
