Tank Drive vs. Omni Directional Drive

[SteveJanesch]

We're using the kit chassis (tank drive) with sticky wheels in the front and whatever works best in the back - slick, omni, or mecanum (we have a set of each). We're going to test each type and let the driving decide. We had to cut the opening of the kit wheel bracket (leg) wider to accommodate the extra width of the dual omni. We'll have to make our own wheel brackets to use the mecanum wheels.

We've tested the slick and the omni wheels so far, and the omnis do an interesting thing - if they're in the back when going slowly over the bump, the chassis will self-align. Since they give much better forward traction than they resist the sideways movement, the trailing omni wheel in the back just pushes that side of the chassis right up to the bump. It's the coolest thing I've seen so far during build season (within our team).

I expect that the mecanum wheels will give similar or better pivoting than the omni wheels, less forward traction but a bit more resistance to being pushed sideways. It'll probably be about a week until we get them tested, though.

- Steve