Mecanum Troubleshooting

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Geek 2.0

This might help: it drives straight when going forward, just not when strafing. Maybe that points to the rollers?

Nah, I'm with Alan on this. An unbalanced mecanum will tend to curve in strafing. If your CG is not in the middle front-back, it'll curve.

[Geek 2.0]

Oooooh boy... that'll be fun to balance out... Would individual PID values account for misbalanced weight?

[EricH]

Might depend on the weight. If your battery, compressor, cRIO, and power distribution are all on one end of the robot, I'd say you'd need to move one or more of them to the other end, if possible. If you're already fairly balanced, but having an arm out causes you to curve, a gyro combined with PID might work.

[maddoctor90]

There are many things that can affect this. Although, the things you can do to help the situation are..

1. Balance same weight on all wheels
2. Tighten rollers to same tension
3. Solve any other issues that may give any wheel more power or traction than the other wheels.
4. Try to program in correction for the what can't be fixed mechanically

[lcoreyl]

All the listed posts will address separate problems which will get you closer to optimum performance; however, one way to ensure you correct for ANY problem (even the ones you don't know about) is to hook up a gyro, and have that autocorrect your orientation. We don't have any experienced programmers, but got the gyro working. Do some searches for how to get that wired/coded.