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Mecanum Wheel
- lovegrenoble 2y agoFor visualization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noqBUEgyQ8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noqBUEgyQ8A
- pava0 2y agoAnother good video about Mecanum Wheels, by Jeremy Fielding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsCUzCCc-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsCUzCCc-k
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoI was a robotics software engineer on a project that built a mecanum wheeled robot. The big problem is that the rollers are small relative to the wheel. You know how bicycles handle rough terrain better than skateboards? The actual rollers on a mecanum wheel are pretty small compared to the diameter of the wheel they are mounted on. Our robot could handily carry a person on a flat floor (the engineers mounted a chair on a prototype and we got to sit on it and drive it with an Xbox controller - an actually extremely fun activity that could make a nice carnival ride). But if the robot encountered a pencil on the ground, the rollers couldn’t roll properly and things would get messed up. I think I’ve seen suggestions of using the wheels for mars rovers, but a mecanum wheel that works in sand would need the rollers to be very large, so the actual wheel would be huge. That would suck up all your weight budget for your robot. Ackermann steering is lighter. All that said, when you have a controlled environment with a flat floor, mecanum wheels are pretty rad!
- lrkrsBlurkn 2y ago[dead]
- freeopinion 2y agoOmni/poly wheels have similar drawbacks but perhaps less so. Arranged holonomically they provide about the same abilities. Possibly cheaper to purchase and maintain.
- regularfry 2y agoDo they have to be small? Geometrically you'd think that they could be a reasonable fraction of the wheel diameter without clashing. The roller width is the limiting dimension because that defines how close to the wheel axle the edge of the roller can get - would thin, large diameter rollers work?
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYeah that’s true, instead of small diameter wide rollers, you could have large diameter narrow rollers, like for example bicycle wheels or scooter wheels. Actually you could even use tracks for the rollers, which might be an interesting innovation. That would increase friction and reduce battery life, but there may be some advantages. Of course it would be very complex mechanically! But something made with scooter wheels could be used to navigate around a city for example. That might be interesting.
- bhouston 2y agoYou can buy these on AliExpress for lego so you can make cheap flexible lego robotics project using them. For robotics prototypes, for me, nothing beats lego: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006145925410.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006145925410.html Lego someday should make an official mecanum wheel so that people can use it in competitions.
- unwind 2y agoAs someone with both a) an engineering-interested kid and b) a mild AliExpress addiction, that is some dangerous stuff. But thanks, hadn't seen those!
- tecleandor 2y agoSometimes opening a random link in AliExpress is as dangerous as TV Tropes or Wikipedia. Ooops, sorry to mention TV Tropes.
- dark-star 2y agothere are also bigger ones, like this: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006212335463.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005006212335463.html I got that truck when it was on sale some time ago, only for the wheels. But as others have pointed out, they are not very practical because they gobble up dirt and stuff like nothing else
- feyman_r 2y agoBeen into mecanum wheels since involvement in FTC (First Tech Challenge). If you want to know how they work, this is a great resource: https://youtu.be/AlsCUzCCc-k?si=0Cqa9rFZ-F-BKRs_ https://youtu.be/AlsCUzCCc-k?si=0Cqa9rFZ-F-BKRs_
- kaeland 2y agoOur FRC robot used mecanum wheels. It even got us to the finals in Atlanta! Team 1848!
- DriftRegion 2y agoThe two uses of mecanum wheels are: 1. rolling on clean flat surfaces and 2. nerd-sniping.
- dbcurtis 2y agoYou forgot: 3. vibration testing drive electronics and payloads. But yeah, #2 is the primary benefit.
- ragebol 2y agoMecanum wheels are great when used in the appropriate setting. Which is: indoors, where there are only very small disturbances in the floor. And even then you might want a very little bit of suspension like on the robot on the left here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/techunited/27997314227/in/album-72157694903080452 https://www.flickr.com/photos/techunited/27997314227/in/albu... that I used in RoboCup@Home This robot drove so smooth it could sneak up on you (in a relatively noisy hall, fair enough) The math to control them well might be an interesting task for a student perhaps.
- heja2009 2y agoAND no dust, grime, etc. These tiny wheels get dirty and clog up pretty fast in human environments and then stop to work and need a good cleaning. Nice for demos but unsuitable for even normal research lab work. I hate them.
- Tepix 2y agoThere are mecanum wheels even for pretty big forklifts used in not very clean environments …
- 2y ago
- divbzero 2y agoReminds me of the HoloTile omnidirectional treadmill floor developed by Lanny Smoot at Disney Imagineering. [1]: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/lanny-smoot-to-be-the-first-disney-imagineer-inducted-into-the-national-inventors-hall-of-fame/ https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/lanny-smoot-to-be-the-first...
- throw310822 2y agoPeople should really stop reinventing the wheel!