[alecmuller]

Thank you for the ideas. That 3/4" plywood is essentially the whole chassis (all 4 drive pods are screwed to it), so it's pretty stiff relative to the weight of the robot. I don't have a whole lot of margin on the pneumatics (which deploy the traction wheels), so I don't think I'd be able to get away with reducing the pressure very much. I believe all 4 wheels are carrying pretty close to the same weight (due to symmetry), but I don't have 4 identical scales to verify that with.

Coupling the front & rear wheels tank-style sounds like a great solution for most 4 & 6 wheel robots; unfortunately it defeats (or complicates the heck out of) the mecanum part of the Octocanum in my case.

At the moment I'm still trying to debug the power-ramping code (to avoid going straight to full power and slipping the wheels). My first attempt (based on the arduino clock time) didn't move at all. I need to find an easy-to-use clock function in Arduino . . .