pic: 6 wheel omni drive

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

Does this design eliminate the ability to strafe? In order for mecanum drivetrains to go sideways, both wheels on each side need to rotate in opposite directions of each other... but it looks like the chain running along the side prevents the wheels from doing this.

Very creative design though, and good job on actually getting it built it so you can play around with it! I like the wheels, too... how did you make them?

He posted drawings of the design before, and said the center wheel was driven on two ball differentials from the outer two. So, it's rotation would be the sum of the other two's rotation; in the case of pure strafing, they would have equal magnitudes in opposite directions and result in the center wheel not rotating. However, the ball differential did look difficult to get "tuned" correctly, so we don't know how well it works in practice.