Hi!
Can mecanum wheels be mounted on carts that are linked together in a “train”? I am not familiar with all the possible applications of these wheels.
I am concerned that as the robot pulling the train of carts rotates, say 180°, the carts will not follow the arc of the robot path and start to slide/strafe sideways.
Thank you so much in advance for your help!
Hello @dwkonn and welcome to the community,
Do you mean that all the cars of the train have the mecanum wheels or only the leading one?
If you want the whole train to have the ability to move to every direction (including side to side, not just rotate) all cars will have to use these wheels, or perhaps just the leading one and the others omniwheels. You can find more information on how these wheels work at these links:
Hi Geraldine:
Thank you for your response.
I need to have two mecanum wheels on each cart along with a pivoting castor. The mecanum wheels are necessary for strafing motion when they are attached to another robot in a previous operation.
The carts will be coupled together like a train pulled along with an AGV.
I am just wondering how the train of carts will respond when the AGV rotates 180°. We are thinking of pulling up to 10 carts.
Mecanum wheels are meant to be used in mirrored pairs, so if you add a passive degree of freedom in between the front pair and rear pair, they won’t behave properly (have not seen the design itself to give an idea of what might happen). It sounds like you might prefer using wheels which can rotate individually, like:
