[Chris is me]

We switched to mecanums on the intake shortly before our first regional and never looked back.

A significant amount of design and prototyping time was spent trying to perfect geometry which would allow for a ball to center itself inside our claw. We tried to get the ball to roll into the claw from as many possible angles as we could. On bag day with blue Banebots wheels, we got the ball to end up in the robot rolled in from about 50 degrees off center in either direction.

We did encounter some minor problems. The competition intake would get the ball in the claw, but between some geometry changes and the location d the punch we could not center the ball in the claw as quickly as we wanted. This was the primary motivation for the change, but extra pickup was also a nice factor.

Once we switched to mecanums, the ball could enter the intake from literally any angle, including completely sideways (90+ degrees off center) and the ball would end up centered in the intake in less than a second. The mecanums had just as good of a grip as the Banebots wheels. We left two small traction wheels on in the center of the claw which actually provide the grip on the ball once properly seated, so we didn't compromise our ability to hold the ball. All in all, it's probably the single best upgrade we've made, at least in terms of effort to reward ratio.

Mecanums on the intake work. Use them!