Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor
We found quite the opposite during our offseason event - rookie drivers with very little practice driving a robot had no preconceived notions about how a tank-style drive handles, so they bobbed and weaved and spun around traffic with ease using our sensor-less and simply-programmed mecanum drive.
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Our first mecanum drive (2010) used 9:1 Banebots p60 gear boxes direct driving four mecanum wheels (and supported on the far side with pillow blocks), and default mecanum code without sensors. The drivers had instant, intuitive control of the machine, because it handles exactly like a 3rd-person shooter with move/strafe--if you play COD or Fallout or whatnot, you've got the basics down already.
The thing to realize about uneven terrain is that mecanum drives work just like tank drive (or close enough that it makes little matter to a human driver) when going forward, backward, or turning normally...the concerns about uneven terrain are, by and large, overblown.
We've since gotten much more sophisticated, with gyros and encoders and octocanum, but the initial mecanum drive we played with was the easiest drive train we've ever built, programmed, or driven--it barely qualified as an afternoon project to get it up and running.