Mecanum Wheels

Mecanum wheels are drive wheels with free spinning rollers set around the circumference at some angle (typically 45 degrees) to the wheel faces to change the direction of the force resulting from the interaction between the wheel and the floor. Mecanum wheels are used in sets of 4 with one pair having its rollers skewed clockwise and the other pair counter clockwise. Identical wheels are placed diagonally opposite from each other such that the front left is identical to the back right and the back left is identical to the front right, the resulting drive base is capable of holonomic locomotion.

Suppliers

The most commonly used supplier of Mecanum Wheels is AndyMark Inc., which also supplies the current kit frame and transmissions. Other teams choose to design their own, or find an alternate supplier.

Cost

Mecanum wheels are more complex than a standard wheel or even an omni-wheel and are more expensive as a result.

Programming

Programming mecanum drivetrains was once a complex task that required decent knowledge of vectors and physics, however, in recent years, Mecanum sample code has been made available to teams making the capability more accessible to teams.

The standard WPILib’s RobotDrive comes with a mecanum drive implementation.