[JesseK]

Spot on about the direct-drive Mecanum setups. It's very efficient, though be sure to clean the rollers every couple of matches.

An interesting thing about nonadrive is the penta drive configuration. 5 omni wheels can be driven by 3 motors for a team with limited resources that wants agility.

- Less code complexity than most non-standard (skid) drive systems
- Less expensive than Mecanum or Killough (traditional 4-wheel Omni)
- Arguably more traction than "out-of-the-box" Mecanum, and definitely more traction than Killough
- In recent years, it would leave at least 1 CIM available for other things
- Can be used in 4WD or 6WD skid configurations, though that is highly coupled with need-based strategy

I've toyed with a concept that uses 5 wheels in nonadrive's pentadrive configuration with the middle wheel being a traction crab module that pivots via pneumatic linkage (pneumatic to keep the code simple). This concept gives a mid-grade complexity while also potentially providing some of the agile+tractive advantages of nonadrive without the weight. Of course it doesn't have the natural anti-turn capability of nonadrive, but that's the trade off. The concept was inspired by nonadrive and the limited pictures I've seen of 330's 2009 bot.

Unfortunately I've been overruled for our offseason prototype due to team survivability, so maybe another team will prototype it?