pic: FRC488's Octocanum Ver 2.0

[Jonathan Norris]

Any thought into making the Mecanum wheels the pivoting ones?? Our team last year developed some CAD prototypes for this combination, and eventually didn't implement it due to the added complexity. However, we did use mecanum last year, and didn't have a great experience with it. I think one of the biggest problems we saw (other then malfunctioning Jaguars...), was that when all four wheels were not on the ground (due to an un-even playing field, and seams in the carpet) the controllability of the system declined, and even worse the power of the drive system declined. Some of this we could correct with programing, but loss in power and acceleration was really noticeable. The loss in acceleration is I believe the biggest downside of using mecanum, the reality I saw was that our robot was just far slower in accelerating, changing direction, and stopping (decelleration) then high traction based drive systems.

I was wondering if you pivoted around the traction wheels instead of the Mecanum wheels in the octocanum, if you would see any advantages because the pistons could act as a suspension system. I've been told that mecanum drive systems perform better with a suspension system, I would be interested in hearing from teams that have used suspension in their mecanum drives. But for me I would need to see a big improvement in acceleration/deceleration to advocate for using mecanum again.