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Re: Swerve Drive vs Mecanum Wheel drive?
Jake,
I agree that if you assume there are no differences between "good" and "bad" mecanum bots then there will be no differences between them. I just think that's a bad assumption, in practice.
When you said "The rollers on mecanums ... will always spin slightly unless you are going perfectly perpendicular to their direction of rotation" I read that to mean that the only time the rollers on a mec wheel on a mec vehicle would not spin is when said wheel was going in a direction perfectly perpendicular to the direction of rotation of the roller presently touching the ground (i.e., going in the direction of that roller's axis). If that is what you meant, it is not correct. If that is not what you meant, could you please clarify what you did mean?
In practice it is possible to build a mecanum vehicle which, when operated in the forward (or reverse) direction on a hard surface, will exhibit virtually no motion of the rollers. In other words, spinning rollers in the forward/reverse direction is not an inherent property of mecanum wheels: it is a mostly due to roller axial free play and operating on a compliant surface.
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