Can Mecanum wheels pass the scoring zone?

[Mecanum Wheel]

Originally Posted by IceStorm

I would say to go for it. Nice thing about mechanum is that if you run into problems you can always just switch them out for standard wheels of the same diameter and run that way. No need to make major mechanical changes.

Biggest thing I would say is to get your drivetrain built early and into the hands of the students. Driving practice is going to be more important than anything else if you want them to use it as anything more than a tank drive robot. We have ran mechanum for a few years now and the new kids tend to forget about the strafe and rotation abilities until after they have had a lot of practice with it.

Hey Chad. Just for future reference, it's spelled mecanum. It's an easy mistake to make.

You are absolutely right. Mecanum robots controlled by excellent drivers are a thing of beauty.

[josesantos]

We successfully drove over a platform with 8" AndyMark Mecanum wheels on a Nano Tube Chassis. The frame tubing is 3" tall, giving us 2.5" of clearance.

http://youtu.be/HsZNYA6C_f8

[goofy173]

I wasn't the one putting the last year's Mecanum drive upgrade on this year's KOP, but they were able to put them outboard using existing holes and they never mentioned it being hard in any way. However using existing holes makes the base too low and it will just barely drag on the scoring bumps so we'll be adding some holes to the KOP chassis to raise it up, but we should be running it as-is tonight as a base and electronic board only (No lifting mechanism installed).

They are going to use a Z axis joystick (that took me 10 minutes to find in a back room behind stuff) but I'm thinking that an XBox controller might work better. I guess we'll find out.

[IceStorm]

Originally Posted by Mecanum Wheel

Hey Chad. Just for future reference, it's spelled mecanum. It's an easy mistake to make.

You are absolutely right. Mecanum robots controlled by excellent drivers are a thing of beauty.

Gotta love auto correct. Typed the post from my cell phone. Didn't even catch that it was changing it on me.

[blturner]

We did mecanum wheels last year as our rookie year. We seeded 15th at Kansas City. They were surprisingly easy to do. If you hit the scoring platform at a diagonal things will be odd. If you try to strafe with your front on the platform and your rear on the carpet it will probably get weird because of the different friction levels. The weight shift of the totes may make it not track in the exact direction commanded. But all that is not too hard to deal with.

We plan on doing them again this year with field centric again as well. I find that fresh drivers do better with field centric. Experienced ones are better with robot centric. I also believe that aligning with mecanums is easier than skid steer for all but the most experienced drivers.

Brian

[earlybird]

Originally Posted by eddie12390

In 2012, we were able to balance on the bridges made from the same material. They don't behave perfectly on the surface, but I think you're overestimating just how much of an effect it has.

We did the same thing back in 2012 and went on the bridge sideways with pretty good results. The bridge back then was much steeper (I think) than these 16 degree bumps. One thing you might want to be careful of with mecanums is that it relies on all 4 wheels being in contact with the ground to move in the direction you want it to go. It has to deal with the force vectors produced by the angled rollers. So if some how you get on three wheels because you hit the scoring platform at an angle this might cause issues but those issues will probably be minimal.