View Single Post
  #14   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 10-01-2008, 01:09
GUI GUI is offline
Registered User
AKA: Gary
FRC #4183 (Bit Buckets)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 229
GUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to beholdGUI is a splendid one to behold
Send a message via Yahoo to GUI
Re: Your thoughts on Mecanum wheels....

Quote:
Originally Posted by Abwehr View Post
One unavoidable problem with both Mecanum and Kiwi-style omni drives are that you are essentially throwing away 30% of your speed. For every rotation of the Mecanum wheel, the robot only translates 1/sqrt(2) = 70.7% of the wheel's circumference when driving straight. Driving diagonally (with two wheels driving and the other two fixed) alleviates this problem.

This is why 341 changed our 2007 kiwi drive from this:

/ \

\ /

to this:

| --

-- |

last year.
This is not a- much of a problem with mecanum, because the rollers don't spin when driving forward or backward you only lose speed going sideways/diagonally.