pic: Omni Design Trial

[Fred Sayre]

Originally Posted by squirrel

So, if you were to set up the wheels to be optimized for straight driving by adjusting the friction to be high enough that the rollers would not be able to roll at normal driving loads, would that make the sideways force vector on the rollers negligible under these conditions? I'm thinking that the inability to overcome static friction would keep the rollers acting like regular tread, and the wheels would indeed act almost like regular wheels under those conditions.

I'm thinking about this as it applies to this game only.

Right, at the cost of even less efficiency going sideways. You could also adjust the roller angle to be closer to an omni wheel to increase the straight driving performance and decrease the side to side performance.

In that paper they talk about adding the feature of being able to lock or vary the angle of the rollers on a mecanum wheel to increase performance. That would be an awesome, award worthy accomplishment by a FIRST team that I hope someone will at least attempt in this or future seasons.

[MrForbes]

Or you could angle omni wheels at, say, 30 degrees to the long axis of the robot instead of 45 to achieve the same effect, right?

[M4 Sherman]

I'm kinda new with plastics, but why would you use UHMW for a chassis?

It would be virtually unbreakable, but isn't it flexible? And I though UHMW was used for more high friction situations(like chain tensioners)?

[MrForbes]

A flexible chassis is a design feature of a holonomic drive robot...helps keep all the wheels on the ground, so it will be more likely to drive the direction you intend it to.