Mecanum Wheels - How do they work?

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Team3763 Adam

What form of drive in LabVIEW would they be programmed with? Arcade but with different inputs on the joysticks? Or...[/list]
Any and all diagrams/pictures/screenshots of LabVIEW are welcome!

Programming mecanum in LabVIEW is very easy. You'll want to use Holonomic Drive, not Arcade.

Holonomic drive has two options, Polar and Cartesian. In Polar you specify a direction, magnitude and rotation. In Cartesian you specify x, y, and rotation. Personally, I like Cartesian better than Polar because it is more similar to a traditional arcade drive. Try both and see which you like better.

The code I've attached shows how our team used mecanum in 2011. The left joystick controls forward-back and strafing. The right joystick does turning.

[Cal578]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

... The left joystick controls forward-back and strafing. The right joystick does turning.

Our team did fairly well with a mecanum drive a few years ago. Instead of two joysticks, we used just one 3-axis joystick, such that twisting the handle controlled rotation of the robot. It was so intuitive that anybody could pick it up pretty well.