Pneumatics or Mecanum

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by cpapplefamily

I'm a new mentor this year. The team always wanted mecanum and this past preseason I helped them successfully get them working with 8" wheels. We are designing for mecanum with an option to abort to 6" drop center 6 wheel drive. We are hoping for lowbar, agility shooting, helping open doors, defence. The traction up the ramps worries me.

See I'd be comfortable with your team running mecanum, at least more comfortable than the average team. You a) successfully prototyped it in the off-season, b) you understand the drive's limitations and advantages, and c) you picked a strategy that works to the strengths of the drivetrain.

With 8" mecanum wheels you should have no problem going under the low bar and over some of the obstacles. I'm not positive you'll be able to get over, for example, the rock wall, but I also haven't tested it to see.

Now when you do build the robot, make sure your drivers have a lot of time to practice using the robot. I've seen countless robots that have mecanum never really use it, they drive as if they have a traction drivetrain and fail because of it.

Good luck!