Hi,
I just took my mecanum rover for its first outside drive.
Axles are taken from this:
https://amewi.com/de/drift-climbing-king
Controller is a Mateksys F405-STD with a Mateksys 3-6s (9-27V) PDB. The rover runs on 2s, but the PDB is working without a problem.
A Raspi W zero is used as a companion computer, running mavlink-router and motion, but it is too slow to be useful. I will replace it with a RPi 3B+ soon.
That is way cool! Congratulations and thanks for sharing!
Looking great! I guess we need a new Omni setup to support this or does one of the existing Omni setups work?
Hi Randy,
the omniX frame type is working fine for mecanum wheels. The rollers on the wheels are angled 45°, so it is the same as an omnix rover with the motors angled 45°.
@count74, i love this project, I love mecanum wheels, but often I’ve been thinking what does this setup improves in autonomous rovers compared to “tank” systems?
Also, I would love to know your setup with the smart port telemetry, in not able to setup an arduplane telemetry via smart port with the same board…
Right now it improves nothing, because the lateral movement is only supported in manual mode. It is just great fun driving a omni rover.
I saw your thread about your problems, but I am afraid I cannot help you. I just copied a model setup in my Taranis and that model was using smart port telemetry with a pixhawk. Being the lazy a** that I am, I did not remove the script. I also never noticed that the taranis voice is audible in the video…
On topic of mecanum, assuming that ardurover supports it, how will it make advantage of it? I always wanted to avoid the oscillations trying to adjust a straight path, but cannot figure out any other situation where mecanum becames handy that are not too specific or complex.
On topic of the telemetry, just want to know how is the wiring done in the FC, and the telemetry outputs parameters.
A few years later I’m about to start a small project involving Ardupilot and a Mecanum wheel rover.
I’m currently in the research step, prior to purchasing components.
Have you found answers as to how the wiring should be?
Maybe @count74 would have the answer (I couldn’t find an Ardupilot omniwheel guide other than parameters settings)
What wiring do you mean?
A mecanum rover requires 4 wheels, 4 motors, 4 ESCs and 4 outputs of the flightcontroller. If you use some kind of power distribution board (there are some FCs which have them integrated or as an accessory), it makes wiring everything up a lot easier.
Happy to see you’re still around. I’m new to this so my question might look funny. Sorry about that.
So motor signals are wired to the Ardupilot “as usual”?
Signal and ground goes to ESC\Encoder whatever?
This part is just a background for the reason I’m looking into this type of project:
I am looking to purchase a chassis + wheel and motor kit (might include encoders or controllers) in order to make it easier for my team to focus on our software part.
We’re trying to implement autonomous navigation by camera, where the RC signal is generated in a companion computer. In the future we’ll migrate to a drone, starting with a rover since it’s less prone to crashing into the ground…
Do not control ArduRover using RC signals, use mavlink GUIDED commands instead. It is simpler and more robust.
@dotanb7
A mecanum rover is a lot like a multicopter in its ability to move (minus the up and down part), but Ardurover will not use the lateral movement in any mode except manual. So while what @amilcarlucas wrote about using mavlink guided commands to move the rover around is normally the way to do it from a companion computer, using RC commands and your own navigation is the only way to make the rover move sideways at the moment.