Mecanum Drivetrains

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Taylor

I disagree with this. Many teams encountered difficulties when driving over uneven field. When field components are placed under the carpet, as they often can be, this takes your carefully tuned 'square' base and lifts up a corner or two. I'd recommend taking Nathan's advice and leaving the chassis 'loose' or having some sort of suspension to negate 'imperfections' in the field.

This. 1000 times this.

Rigid frames are the death of holonomic systems like this (omni or mecanum drive, swerve is a whole different ball game I don't have enough experience with to talk about).

You want flex because you want each wheel on the ground at all times. Not doing this will result in unpredictable behavior... well, ok, it's completely predictable given that you know that you're driving over uneven terrain and what the normal force on the wheels is and... blah blah blah.