Controlling a Mecanum drive with two joysticks?

[Leav]

Hi everyone,
I'm mentoring a team this year and the kids want to try out mecanum wheels for this season, and who am I to tell them no? (the fact that it's been a dream for me in all of my FIRST years helped... a bit... )

It seems to me there are two problems regarding the control of mecanum wheels with the normal joysticks:

1. the calculations regarding the control of the vehicle are somewhat complex I believe. I am looking into this whitepaper:
   http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1836
   
   but I am skeptic it provides the exact equations we need to use... can it be that easy? (i'm so stuck at thinking it's complex that if the solution is this simple I can't believe it's a solution )
   
   
   
2. a normal joystick just doesn't have enough degrees of rotation to control a holonomic robot. so we had a couple of ideas:
   • use a two joystick design where each joystick controls the a corresponding side of the robot. this would allow full control but the exact function would need to be figured out.
   • use an analog joystick with a "sidewinder" functionality to control the spin of the robot.

I would love to have some input about our ideas from more experienced teams.

thanks alot and have a fun and educational season!

-Leav