Controlling a Mecanum drive with two joysticks?

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by Leav

• 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.
  

-Leav

Be careful with implementation if you decide to go with tank. If you move the sticks opposite ways, the robot will be trying to tear itself apart/compress itself (yes I know it might be hard to do by accident but closed loop is better than open loop )


I believe 1675's Mecanum control was 1 stick left/right did pivot, the other stick did all directions of translation (including forward and backward)

[joeweber]

A simple way to use two joysticks is to tie them together mechanicaly so they will not go away from each other or together and use the mixing program for one joystick that comes with the control system. You can use the left joystick to control the left drives and the right joystick to control the right drives. You can go forward , back angle, and as you move the joysticks in oposit directions it will rotate. This is a simple fix and is easy to control. We did this and it solved all the problems. We did try to use one joystick to do everything but it was hard to have fine control. Also when you twist the controler to rotate you could get lots where your robot is actually going.

[T3_1565]

we are also thinking to use a omni wheel design this year as well (also a dream of mine lol ) and we have decided on a two joystick operation. (as people of said, one joystick controls forward backward and strafing, whilst the other comtrols rotation)

The main reason we went with two joysticks is because some of us one the team play First Person Shooters a lot. So this style of controlling works well with us. causes thats how we would play a FPS.

I don't know if that helps at all but that was why we chose to make ours two joystick.

[joeweber]

If you invest in doing omni directional drive, make sure you have drivers that can handle the multi layered tactics required to drvie it. We enjoyed having a robot with it but we did not have drivers that were good enough to use its full potential. Some problems with using it is traction, but if you add addtional layers of wheels you get a little more traction. Our robot was very fast , and you can get out of traps quicker. We were able to go up ramps with out any trouble, and could coral balls very easy. We do have some information on what we did on our web site. http://team1322.org/tech_tips.htm