The one thing I can't stop thinking about is the solution to achieving omnidrive without slipping around when pushed.
My team did kiwi drive this year, which worked, and over the past month I thought of the possibility of reorienting all wheels so they spun away from the center of the bot.
Control would be a bit awkward, but after looking at my coding, I found out that kiwi drive code seems to work with some tweaking. That said, the weird part would be that strafing is achieved through spinning the left and right wheels in alternate directions, top wheel as deadweight.
However, if another triple set of wheels was setup so each original wheel had an alternate on the other side, that would solve the problem ("strafing" now being achieved similar to conventional 4 wheel omni). Top view looks a lot like the Walmart logo, hence me calling it "Walmart Drive". The original intent was in no way geared toward getting donations from Walmart
. Since there's usually a 4 CIM limit, though, this would require a pillar of 3 gearboxes in the middle powering each wheel pair.
The difference I'm thinking it has over kiwi or most omnidrives is that now the bot is fairly difficult to push as the wheels spin outward instead of the rollers rolling outward. I believe it still works as an omnidrive in this configuration, though I'm not totally sure. Nor am I sure whether it's worth doing in build season. Still, it seems like something fun to play with
