Mecanum Tank drive

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Telthien

Perhaps our team hasn't been setting it up properly, then? I distinctly recall trying just that, and ending up with an arc depending on the degree to which it was powered. I'm not sure how one would explain this, though.

An arc is exactly what you would expect to get with a tank-drive User Interface when both joysticks are pushed forward, with one pushed further than the other.

If you are using Y_L and Y_R to control the left wheels and the right wheels, respectively, you will get essentially the same behavior from a mecanum drive as you would from a skid-steer vehicle.

As for Cartesian vs. polar, most implementations of Cartesian processing I've seen simply convert to polar coordinates, then use sines and cosines. I guess it would be possible to do so otherwise, but it seems less simple and/or flexible, at least at first glance. That could definitely be wrong, though.

The inverse kinematic calculations for mecanum are actually simpler with Cartesian inputs, and require no trigonometry. Polar inputs must be converted to Cartesian with trigonometry.