The Tech Vikes are proud to present our 2017 robot Njord!
Specs:
19 FPS swerve drive
90 fuel capacity
Low goal
Floor gear pick up
Automatic gear alignment
3 second hanging
Any chance we can get a close-up on those swerve modules? They look really cool!
Here are some pictures of the actual modules as well as a CAD model. This is our first year doing swerve drive so they definitely aren’t perfect but they’ve worked very well for us so far. 
What led you to a two-wheel per module design? Did you perceive any benefits versus one wheel? I love the gear intake btw.
Thank you!!
We never tested any modules using just one wheel. We had some help from another team who was familiar with swerve and we ended up just using two right from the get go. Mechanically it made it a lot simpler because with two wheels we were able to have a bevel gear on your drive shaft go between your wheels making the drive shaft centered. With one wheel swerve I believe you would have to off set your drive shaft which would have made it mechanically more complicated. Here is a picture of a one wheel swerve I found and you can kinda see how there’s more gears and such to account for the offset of the drive shaft.
http://cdn3.volusion.com/vyfsn.knvgw/v/vspfiles/photos/am-3009-2.jpg?1442240393
Is it a live axle you are using for the swerve wheels (keyed shaft)? If so, did you thread on both ends to use nuts? Or is only one wheel driven by the bevel gear?
It seems like a really straightforward design and a good way to simplify a swerve drive.
Would you mind explaining your guys strategy for why you’re not shooting into the high efficiency goal?
It’s hard to tell from the picture but it’s actually a hex shaft with both ends threaded for the nuts. But yes only one wheel is driven by the bevel gear.
Thank you!! but like I said earlier I have to give a lot of the credit to the team that helped us out with our swerve drive.
Would you mind explaining your guys strategy for why you’re not shooting into the high efficiency goal?
This year after we saw the game we decided that we wanted to build a simple yet effective robot. For us that meant choosing low goal over high goal. Going for high goal would have added a lot more mechanisms and complication to our robot (agitator, shooter, possible ball feeder, a second camera). Another reason we decided on low goal is because strategy wise we decided in the beginning that gears were more important so we designed around that. Also in my opinion high goal is a pretty defendable shot this year. There’s not really a protected zone to shoot from like there kind of was last year and with one bump from a defender there’s going to be balls flying everywhere. Whereas with low goal you can’t be defended easily. We also have a pretty large hopper which I think will allow us to keep up with some shooters