Mecanum or Swerve?

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

I admit that I have never programmed a mecanum drive, but I dont see it being easy to program. Sure, maybe the basic movements are simple, however I have seen few mechanum drive robots that are controlled effectively. This tells me that either the drivers dont know how to reap the benefits of a mecanum drive, or that the drive code is not up to par.

I programmed an omni drive robot in 08, and by no means was it easy, and it was nowhere near as controllable as I hoped.

It's easy to program "relative" absolute mecanum/holonomic code, as in you push the joystick left and the robot moves to the left relative to the robot. This method does not need any math functions other than elementary operators (like +-*/).

Programming "absolute" mecanum/swerve, as in you push the joystick left and no matter what way the robot is oriented it moves left relative to how the drivers are facing, is more difficult. This latter case involves the use of a gyro to track current robot heading, and a lot of trig functions for each of the wheel outputs.