Mecanum Wheel
Mecanum wheelbase
Table of Content
Prerequisite
You are recommended to read the Omniwheel notes before continuing this notes
What is a Mecanum wheel?
Mecanum wheel is sometimes called the Swedish wheel or Ilon wheel. It is also an omnidirectional wheel design for a land-based vehicle to move in any direction. To understand how it works, here is an interactive page.
How does it work?
The small discs (called rollers) of a Mecanum wheel are 45 degrees to the turning direction. So, a vertically installed Mecanum wheel is equivalent to a 45-degree installed omniwheel. Therefore, the math for the two wheelbases above is the same.
Although the wheel looks like it is moving in the blue arrows' direction, it is actually applying forces in the black arrows' direction.
So, we can define the Forces A, B, C, and D in these directions like this. Then follow the steps in this omniwheel notes to calculate how much forces we need to move the wheelbase forward.
Remember to check if your mech teammates installed the Mecanum wheels correctly like the picture below. Or else your wheelbase can't move and rotate correctly
Things to work on
Your team should have chosen a wheelbase for your RDC robot. Find out the general equation for your chosen wheelbase (i.e. speeds of all wheels in relation to Fx, Fy, and Torque) and write a control function (C code) to control your wheelbase.
Given Fx = x, Fy = y, Torque = θ,
A = ? B = ? C = ? D = ?
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