Need advice on mecanum

[Dexterium]

A mecanum drive train has the advantage of mobility, but that mobility comes at the cost of power. My team found this out the hard way when we were pushed all over the field. Since that is no longer an issue mecanum would be great for this game. As far as setting up the system, make sure the four wheels/gearboxes/motors are as close to identical as possible. The way mecanum wheels make strafing possible is reliant on the angle of the force generated by the wheels. If one of the wheel assemblies creates a greater or lesser force than the others, the strafing will be at a diagonal. The small amount of angling that will occur regardless can be fixed through use of a gyroscope; however, if the degree of the difference is too much, the gryo will do more harm than good. I known that in LabVIEW at least the gyro feature is build into the mecanum drive (called holonomic drive in the code) control block. The gyro will take some effort to function properly, but it is worth it in the end. If I remember right LabVIEW (if you are using it) has a nice detailed example of the coding setup. Good luck with it! Being able to strafe would be a major advantage in this game.