Kickoff is behind us, and our first prototype is taking shape: a drive base with varied capabilities, rolling on mecanum wheels.
Each mecanum wheel has small rollers set at 45°, so it pushes at an angle instead of straight ahead. Spin all four wheels the same way and those angled pushes cancel out side to side, so the robot drives straight. Spin the two diagonal pairs in opposite directions and it slides sideways. Add a turn on top and it can do all three at once. Turning a joystick's direction into four separate wheel speeds is vector math, and that's what we're learning right now.
We're writing that code in OnBot Java, the Java editor that runs in a browser straight off the robot controller, and building on libraries instead of starting from scratch.
And we're paying for the season by building websites for local businesses. Here's how that works.