Pathfinder VS OdometryCore

hey, i just figured i’d put this out here in case it helps: meccanum wheels, by nature, have a LOT of slip - that’s how they’re able to move in any direction. i’ve had quite a bit of experience with the math and kinematic behind this (two libraries i’ve written/am writing, Pathfinder and Pathfinder2, as well as a library the other programmer on my team wrote, OdometryCore) and it’s VERY HARD to accurately track the position of a meccanum robot only using the encoders in the wheels. it’s not impossible, but it’s very, very challenging. the more your robot moves, the less accurate it becomes, and it will very quickly report positions that are nowhere near where your robot actually is. you can go for it, but i would strongly encourage you check out three wheel odometry instead - it’s been very accurate and allowed us to do really cool things, like accurately record a robot’s movement and play it back perfectly. you’ll have much more success with three wheel odometry - my team designed a custom odometry system and i’m sure they’d be happy to give you more information if you’d like. best of luck :)

as a result, two libraries were born - Pathfinder2 and OdometryCore. i'll spare you the details, but OdometryCore is a minimal and efficient position tracking system, and Pathfinder2 works some magic on top of that. for example, you can tell your robot to drive to (10, 10) and face 45deg, and it will do exactly that, assuming you calibrate your robot correctly. you're more than welcome to check one or both of those out if you're interested, but yeah - we're the only team i've spoken to that has NOT used roadrunner for odometry.

hey, i just figured i’d put this out here in case it helps: meccanum wheels, by nature, have a LOT of slip - that’s how they’re able to move in any direction. i’ve had quite a bit of experience with the math and kinematic behind this (two libraries i’ve written/am writing, Pathfinder and Pathfinder2, as well as a library the other programmer on my team wrote, OdometryCore) and it’s VERY HARD to accurately track the position of a meccanum robot only using the encoders in the wheels. it’s not impossible, but it’s very, very challenging. the more your robot moves, the less accurate it becomes, and it will very quickly report positions that are nowhere near where your robot actually is. you can go for it, but i would strongly encourage you check out three wheel odometry instead - it’s been very accurate and allowed us to do really cool things, like accurately record a robot’s movement and play it back perfectly. you’ll have much more success with three wheel odometry - my team designed a custom odometry system and i’m sure they’d be happy to give you more information if you’d like. best of luck :)

If it interests you, here's the link: OdometryCore