Mecanum wheels are great. They allow a vehicle to go in any direction, almost in a spooky way. Invented by Bengt Erland Ilon while working at Mecanum AB, a patent was filled in 1972 and delivered in 1975 (US3876255 A). Neat if you need to shuffle around stuff in a crammed place – such as a navy carrier. Speaking of which, you can spot a forklift on Mecanum wheels in the 2009 Star Treck movie. Note that the engineering deck was filmed in a brewery, so the production team may have found it on site :-). Ok, all this sounds cool, but what’s the point? I’ve recently presented my new rocket stand in an earlier post. While I was making my researches, one option I’ve explored is the use of Mecanum wheels to move the rocket around. The idea was to use the wheels to allow translations and rotations of the rocket’s body! A reverse Mecanum if you prefer. Indeed, one can easily orient regular wheels to allow one or the other, but what if you want to do both simultaneously (or at different times but without changing your setup)? I did a quick POC mockup using wheels – one left, one right – by Vex Robotics and two PanaVise models 201 jr (ideally forming a V with a 90° inner angle). And it works like a charm! However, and for now, I will not need to implement the solution because of the rocket won’t weight a ton. But it is a good trick to have up my sleeves.
