Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

I will have to disagree with this post. Last year we were one of the fastest robots at balancing both single and double with mecanum. WE were the ones that pushed robots up the bridge. I'm sure you had a bad experience playing with bad mecanums at your regionals but you can't generalize that all mecanum are this way. Here's a video of us lining up, lowering the bridge, and balancing all in around 4 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWYN5xVIyzw&t=11m1s

With Mecanum at our last competition we were hitting 5 cycles with heavy defense and 7 without.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

We have liked mecanum for several years because of the ease of lining up with field elements -- like the feeder slot. (We won a regional in 2010 and didn't this year, but despite that I can say without hesitation that this is the best robot we've built so far. That said, we did use octocanum, not straight mecanum, but we rarely dropped the traction wheels at FLR or Buckeye.)

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

I believe you're looking for something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogy65hEPIXk
2052 used mecanums better than I have ever seen

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

Good call, they use mecanums extremely well. Unfortunately it has already been said on the previous page.

See the previous page for discussion about it.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

At a recent meeting we had our robot from this years game with a 6 wheel drive and the mechanum bot out.The kids driving the mechanum couldnt get around the 6 wheel bot enough or by anymeans run circles around it. also if our six wheel cought the mechanum and started pushing it it was all over. so in the end mechanum is manuverable but its not great

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

[/quote]
Well-practiced Mecanum <= Well-practiced 6 Wheel Drivetrain
Well-practiced Mecanum >= Good 6 Wheel Drivetrain
Little-practiced Mecanum < Good 6 Wheel Drivetrain[/quote]

this is just abouat the best thing i have read...good drivers and practice make a great difference

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

(I'll post videos later, I'm not able to get to them now)

I was a driver for 1259 this year, and we used 4 wheel mecanum. Although I still feel we would have been a better robot with tank drive, we used the mecanum as well as we could. In Wisconsin I was able to outmaneuver some of the opposing alliances (with tank drive) with a combination of strafing and spinning to get to the pyramid so we could start our 3 level climb.

Would I have been able to do that with tank? Probably...chances are with tank we wouldn't get into situations where we had to really try hard to outmaneuver other robots. But the mecanum allowed us to move in dimensions that tank robots couldn't, and in the small, cramped side lanes on either side of the field near the pyramids, I think that additional degree of freedom helped a little bit.

A quick aside--this has befuddled our programmers for some time now. Our robot strafes almost perfectly on smooth floors, like tile, or the traditional wooden gym floors. Yet, on the field at both Wisconsin and Duluth, strafing was slow, and required a lot of manual adjustment on my end to do well. Trying to strafe with just one joystick meant turning while moving in one direction. It was our first year doing mecanum, so if anyone's able to point us in the right direction, that'd be swell. We thought it was the individual spindles on the wheels slipping, but I've seen other robots use 6" mecanum wheels from andymark no problem.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

FIRST fields ain't level. Also, carpet != wood/tile you'll get drastically different performance characteristics.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

How can you reasonably expect anyone to take your response seriously when you didn't care to take theirs seriously?

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

To be fair, mecanums have a really really good installation effort / cool factor ratio.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

http://youtu.be/rJoqeiuX3lA?t=1m43s

4096 handled the defensive bots well in this match but again, it doesn't necessarily support the mecanum > 6WD argument, just an example that was requested.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

Which make them perfect for demo robots, assuming there will be a flat floor.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

This. Also check weight distribution--a climber sticking out the side could be enough to throw off any straight-line maneuvers not going through that side. I don't know how many teams that use mecanums use suspensions any more, but I'd consider a suspension at least worth a look if you don't want to do corrections.

The last truly flat field--no under-carpet bumps or over-carpet bumps--was not 2011. 2009 doesn't count (and had a bump anyways--there was carpet exposed at the edges). 2007, if you weren't climbing a ramp; 2005 if you count the ramps. Yep, 2005. Until you factor in the loading-zone triangles, in which case we haven't had a truly flat field since before automode--in 2002's Zone Zeal.

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

Your opinion doesn't count because you're closer to Michigan than we are. :DDDD

Haha, okay, point taken. But I would venture to say that your team was an exception to the rule at pushing robots up the bridge in Rebound Rumble, n'est-ce pas?
And congratulations on your 10,000 lakes performance!

Re: Video of Mecanum Drive Running Circles Around 6 Wheel Drives
 

Proof that a 6wd robot is superior...;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu1VCYP4doo

I don't see them using mecanums...:p