[efoote868]

actually, our veterans had trouble with it... we wanted to give him a single joystick... but he made us give him two (one for forward, rotation; another for side to side... it defeated the purpose of having a 3 axis joystick)

driving a mecanum is kinda weird... because it can go in any direction, you need to think where is it going next. giving demonstrations is fun, especially for inexperienced drivers... running into people, walls, etc.

The friction coefficient (i believe) is the cosine of the angle of the rollers... rollers at a 45 degree angle will have around 71% traction

Use mecanum wheels when the game requires alot of movement, not pushing.
(but more pushing than what the "basic" omnis would require)

lazy susan as in crab? each has its own unique strengths... if you're seriously considering either, your best bet is to get started designing now (having the wheels available has a much better advantage than starting from scratch during the build season) Team 868 spent 4 / 6 weeks just getting the wheels done... But i'm sure thats not an issue now, as teams will likely just buy AM's

Last but not least,
As for coding the drive (keeping the hard working programmers in mind) If you have a decent symmetry to your wheels, then the code can be brought down to 4 lines long... otherwise, it'll be a nightmare. Also, with the motors, make sure each is lined up in the same configuration, if not, then they deadband at different values, making for weird movements going slow

(yeah, 868 spent alot of time discussing this)