I was wondering about swerve in general, and whether i should propose the idea to my team to start working on it.
There’s quite a few topic already on swerve. You should look those up. Looking at your team number, you guys don’t have much experience and since you’re also a newer team, I doubt you are going to have as many resources. I would highly recommend against swerve as it is complex programming wise. The mechanical aspect of it has been solved with kits but those are expensive.
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Good luck getting modules anytime soon they seem to be sold out
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A swerve drive is not necessary to do well. It looked like 118 and 1678 both used a west coast drive. Swerve can be a cool offseason project though.
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Yeah I figured, but I was trying to think (probably too far) ahead. Thanks for the answer though.
If you think you can do it and you have the resources to, by all means go ahead. But if you have even the smallest doubt, don’t. Your drivetrain is your most important mechanism and if that isn’t rock solid, chances are nothing else will work as intended.
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Yeah, we really dont have a lot of funding or anything… thanks for the help
Not a lot of funding means stick with the KOP drivetrain. It’s great, reliable, and you can adapt it slightly for each year. Swerve is the most expensive and hardest to get right drivetrain. If you want to improve the kit of parts try adding Neos of f500s to the tough box mini. That’s just my two cents.
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Being next years driver, even though we definitely won’t be doing swerve how does it feel vs a KOP drivetrain?
How it drives is completely different because they are different driving schemes. Also, programming has a huge part in making a robot drive smoothly. The challenge in swerve is not mechanical, it’s more programming than anything.
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No, I don’t think you should propose swerve. It’s expensive, both in funds needed to purchase hardware and in time needed to code and practice with it. Somewhere down the road you team will want to pursue it as an off season project.
Based on looking at your match videos, the best thing your team can do from a competition perspective is focus your next design on scoring points quickly.
Quickness and speed are not the same thing. Quickness is more complicated, because it encompasses precise maneuvering, reliable game piece acquisition, and accurate scoring, all within a short time. Think about this: what is the simplest robot your team can build that will complete the basic autonomous challenge, perform six tele-operated scoring cycles, and help your alliance earn the endgame bonus? Break that down into parts and think about the time required for each part. Think about seconds; each of the robot’s tasks will require a few. If any one of them requires more than 10, you need to think harder and find a quicker way.
Getting quick is the first step to becoming competitive.
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Wow, thanks for the giant reply. I’ll definitely show this to my team, especially the quickness part. I’m next years driver so a lot of that is on me haha.
Swerve and the kop (an example of the larger type of drivetrain called tank) are fundamentally different. Sure, because they are fundamentally different, they might feel different. However, how a drivetrain “feels” is mostly related to how it is coded, and the preference of the driver.
One year, our driver was a rocket league grand champion. This means that he had an insane level of control over the controller, and meant he valued having complete and instantaneous control over the drivetrain. He felt that having no software ramping “felt” best because he felt he could maintain full control over the robot.
However, this year our driver (and also those who tried our to be driver) was/were less experienced (still very very good) and thus did not have as fine motor controls over the controller. He preferred more software ramping because it “felt” better and allowed him to better control the robot.
My point is, ultimately, as long as it is physically able to move decently, how it “feels” (partially) comes down to how it is programmed.
The difference between swerve and a tank drivetrain is not necessarily how they feel, but more their level of mobility. To some people, field oriented control - being able to move in all direction “feels” better. Without field oriented control (without really good programming) swerve can discombobulate people and not be any better than tank drive. To some people, tank “feels” better because it is easier to keep track of the orientation of the robot.
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Thanks for the answer, this was my second year and I didnt do much last year, so theres still a lot I dont know.
I’m happy to help. The awesome part about FRC is we get to learn every day. Even my mentors ask freshmen to teach them how they did things because they want to learn the new things the freshmen bring to the table.
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Most teams look at swerve as a drive train to be more competitive. 1640 has been doing swerve since 2010. I have a different view of swerve. While I do believe swerve has been a competitive advantage to our team, I push our team to do swerve year after year for another reason. Doing swerve gives me a complete project every year to push the principles of engineering to our students. Generation after generation of our kids have been challenged by the design, manufacturing , and programming of swerve. It gives me a consistent method to hurt their brains. As an example at the last meeting I went off on a rant on absolute encoders and rotary angle sensing.
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A lot is on the driver, unless it is not. There is lot with programming and design that can be helpful.
Other suggestions, bigger intakes could help a lot of teams get ball quicker. Seems like you guys had some jamming issues, how could you resolve those? Could you build a climber? I see you didn’t climb this year, but that is a task that has appeared many years. I would start there first.
Swerve used to be a heavier solution that required more PDP slots, more weight, more programming talent and more custom fabrication that ultimately took more time overall to build the robot. With the expansion of COTS solutions that easily bolt or rivet on to 2x1 tube, brushless motors that increase power while cutting weight, and teams posting quality swerve code, most of these problems are going away (except the PDP slots), making swerve very accessible and not a lot more expensive relative to the total robot expense. We also had (arguably the first) case of the best robot in the world being swerve with 1323 in 2019.
It’s definitely still not required to do well, but in many games now it will certainly add a competitive advantage. Your mechanisms are definitely still priority, provided you have the drive train traction and motor power needed.
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The vast majority of teams should be using the kit drive and never touch swerve. Until you’re seeding high consistently at your events year after year, I would not even look at swerve. We did it in 2018 and while it was a great project, it greatly stretched our resources and hurt other areas of our robot because so much time went into getting the swerve running. We’ve used the kit drive the last two years and focused mainly on what goes on top of the drive and have performed much better.
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You have to be able to master arcade or tank drive first before you get into swerve.
I heard it takes 3-5 years of offseason practice of swerve before your team is main season ready.
Remember: Driving is the most important function of your robot.
Also consider the value of implementing swerve vs spending more time on a game objective
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