Locking Mecanum Wheel

• My largest contribution to the FIRST Tech Challenge community is popularizing locking mecanum wheels. Standard mecanum wheels allow for omnidirectional movement but are lacking in traction compared to standard wheels with fixed rubber tread. Temporarily fixing the rollers on a mecanum wheel allow it to act as a standard rubber wheel in instances where higher traction is required.

• Locking the rollers on mecanum wheels has been implemented several times in large robots over the last 20 years but was not miniaturized for smaller robots. From 2019-2021, I worked on several prototypes of locking mecanum designs for small robots and introduced the concept to the FTC community. Since then, several teams have run these wheels competitively, proving their effectiveness at a smaller scale.



A photo and CAD screenshot of my fourth iteration. I documented my 3rd version in this YouTube video.