[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

A MASSIVE problem with mecanum drive this year, just as you could have had the issue in Breakaway last year with our mecanum bot, is the steel plates under the carpet.

Our build lead and I ran some simple vector addition, and realized that any mecanum wheel on a slight incline like the steel plates under the towers can and likely will cause 20% of the force lost on one wheel diagonally opposite to one on the incline, and transferred to the wheel on the incline. This will cause you to lose significant control of the robot, and in this case, a trip to your scoring lane can likely end up as a trip to the opponent's zone. It is very hard to right the bot after that, and can cause the rollers on the mecanum wheel to lock up.

Be wary of this.

Not sure where you're getting this - Our mecanum drive had no problem last year on either the bumps or the slight rise before the bumps. It drove beautifully.

As for "running circles" around other robots - that's not why we build mecanum drives. We build mecanum drives because they're a fairly large gain in maneuverability (extra axis of motion opens up a lot of extra possiblities when driving, *especially* in anything involving lining up) for a fairly negligible increase in complexity and a small decrease in maximum pushing force. Not every benefit in maneuverability comes directly from robot-on-robot situations, and even in those, while you might not be "running circles" around a 6wd, you certainly will have an advantage if your goal is to get past the other robot rather than push it out of the way (and even with a traction drive, pushing another robot out of the way is far from trivial and often not the best course of action).