Holonomic Drive Mathmatics Discussion

[robotaddict]

Have we all heard of holomonic drives here? If not let me expound... A holomonic drive uses things called "omniwheels" which are sort of like normal wheels, but with rollers mounted along the wheel which allow it to move perpendicular to the plane of the wheel. If you mount four of these with one pair perpendicular to the other. This allows motion in any direction from any starting position.

Now comes the interesting part, how on earth do you control this darn thing?! Sure you can move in any direction, but this would confuse any mortal driver. So I had the "brilliant" idea of using a gyro to give the robot absolute direction, that is when you push the stick away and it goes away, and vice versa, but in uncomplicating the drivers' job I have complicated my own. Now not only must the joystick inputs be scaled and realigned, but now they must be modified by the gyro's output, too. Oi. So here are some rudimentary equations...

true y input = (cos(angle from origin) * original y input) + (sin(angle from origin + 90) * original x input)

true x input = (cos(angle from origin + 90) * original x input) + (sin(angle from origin) * original y input)

You can see my dillema, especially after you add the z axis, though it should be a good deal simpler... PLEASE ADVISE!