- FRC Game Manual
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# Introduction to PathWeaver

Warning

PathWeaver is deprecated and will be removed for 2027. Users may find Choreo or PathPlanner more useful. They both have an intuitive user interface and swerve support.

Autonomous is an important section of the match; it is exciting when robots do impressive things in autonomous. In order to score, the robot usually need to go somewhere. The faster the robot arrives at that location, the sooner it can score points! The traditional method for autonomous is driving in a straight line, turning to a certain angle, and driving in a straight line again. This approach works fine, but the robot spends a non-negligible amount of time stopping and starting again after each straight line and turn.

A more advanced approach to autonomous is called “path planning”. Instead of driving in a straight line and turning once the line is complete, the robot continuously moves, driving with a curve-like motion. This can reduce turning stoppage time.

WPILib contains a trajectory generation suite that can be used by teams to generate and follow trajectories. This series of articles will go over how to generate and visualize trajectories using PathWeaver. For a comprehensive tutorial on following trajectories, please visit the end-to-end trajectory tutorial.

Note

Trajectory following code is required to use PathWeaver. We recommend that you start with Trajectory following and get that working with simple paths. From there you can continue on to testing more complicated paths generated by PathWeaver.