[FTC]: Holonomic?

[krisloz]

I'm thinking of trying a holonomic drive next year and I just want to know how helpful and the problems teams faced in using this style. How hard was it to engineer/program? I'm going to use Robot C for programming. Any input you may have is greatly appreciated.

[JesseK]

Each year at least one holonomic-like drive makes it into Eliminations at champs. While the drive itself isn't the only factor in that success, the teams who drove those bots felt very comfortable with them. So get started with building and driving that drive train now.

There are several whitepapers here on CD that give example code of omni-drive, both driver and field-centric. Go to "CD-Media" at the top, then select "Search" under "Papers". Search for "holonomic", "omni drive", and even "Mecanum" since the code is all very very similar. Try not to dismiss any of the papers just because they're too technical -- they all have something of value.

[LeelandS]

I can't speak to Holonomic drive at the FTC level, but I can give you a little more insight on the Holonomic drive at the FRC level. I've never been part of a Holonomic project first-hand, so you may want to take what I say with a grain of salt.

I had a conversation a year or two ago with a team that was using Holonomic. Since I'd never seen the drive up-close before, I was pretty excited about it. The team told me the biggest issue they had on the programming end was the non-standard driving. That is, as he put it, "there's not really a way to just drive forward." That's obviously a result of the angling of the wheels, and none of them being pointed straight forward normally. As stated above, you'll be able to find a great amount of while papers on the subject of getting the wheels to work out well.

From the mechanical standpoint, I can't offer you much aside from what I've seen in pictures. On that note, I can say it doesn't LOOK terribly difficult. The biggest problem I've heard people have is not having the wheels lined up correctly (at 90 degree intervals). That's something you need to be wary of. Again, don't put a lot of stock in that. The mechanical difficulty wasn't something that came up much in the conversation.

The best advice I can offer is browse the media and white paper section, looking for examples of Holonomic drive systems and documents about how to program them.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by LeelandS

I had a conversation a year or two ago with a team that was using Holonomic. Since I'd never seen the drive up-close before, I was pretty excited about it. The team told me the biggest issue they had on the programming end was the non-standard driving. That is, as he put it, "there's not really a way to just drive forward." That's obviously a result of the angling of the wheels, and none of them being pointed straight forward normally. As stated above, you'll be able to find a great amount of while papers on the subject of getting the wheels to work out well.

Keep in mind that I'm from FRC too, and my perspective is totally from FRC. Sorry.

FRC Team 1640 has a wonderful article about a non-holonomic, omni directional system. They have a nice focus on the driving part – though the ease of drive really depends on how you program and map your controls.

http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?t...el_Pivot_Drive

Lastly, from a scouting standpoint at FRC, Holonomic drives are notorious for their low traction.

Hopefully this helps.