Mecanum Differential Drive

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Motor distribution and shifting aren't really the primary drawbacks of a mecanum drive; it's the decrease in traction that gets you. There's little purpose in shifting to a lower-gear with a mecanum drive train when your pushing ability is traction-limited.

As for your idea, I'm having a hard time visualizing what exactly it is you're suggesting, or how it'd result in a noted improvement over the standard one motor and one gearbox per wheel.

One could incorporate locking mecanum wheels to gain more traction, but the limitation this addresses is top speed / acceleration time to top speed. I haven't heard of a mecanum setup pushing 16 feet per second or higher in FIRST, which seems to be a fairly regular occurrence with tank drive.



Output of shifting gearbox A is used as one of the inputs to planetary gearboxes B and C. The other input to B and C are independent motors. The output of the planetary gearbox goes to each wheel.
In this setup, the annulus, the planets, and the sun gear are all utilized, instead of the traditional fixed annulus.