6 wheel holonomic drive feasibility

[Ether]

Originally Posted by ekapalka

So you don't think encoders will be necessary?

I purposely worded it the way I did:

Control the mec wheel speeds as you normally would (i.e. based on standard mec inverse kinematics), and control the omni wheel speeds based on...

To control the wheel speeds properly requires an encoder on each wheel. But you could probably make it work somewhat using open-loop voltage control.

Why would it not add any pushing power?

If you custom-made the center omni wheels using high-traction treaded rollers there might be a small difference. Seems like an awful lot of time, expense, and effort when there are better ways to achieve increased pushing force.