The engineer-to-engineer checklist for strafing, rotating and diagonal-driving AGVs — wheels, motors, coupling and control.
Mecanum drive gives you omnidirectional motion: forward, backward, strafe, rotate in place, and any diagonal — without a steering mechanism. For warehouse AGVs, AMRs and education platforms operating in tight aisles, that means no turning circle at all.
You need four mecanum wheels: two with rollers angled 45° one way, two the other way (labelled A/B or L/R on our wheels). The controller mixes the four wheel speeds — the classic inverse-kinematics equations — and the platform moves in the desired direction.
Arduino/ESP32 for prototyping, Raspberry Pi + ROS for production AMRs. The mecanum mix is ~15 lines of code; the hard part is tuning acceleration to avoid wheel slip on starts and stops.
Start with our Mecanum Drive Combo — 4 wheels + couplings, or the full 4WD chassis platform. Tell us your payload and motor shaft and we will spec the complete drive train.
Four mecanum wheels (two left-hand rollers, two right-hand), four motors with matching bore, a motor driver rated for total current, and a controller (Arduino/Raspberry Pi/PLC) running the inverse-kinematics mix. Our 4WD chassis kit includes wheels + couplings ready to bolt on.
Yes — that is the core advantage. By controlling the four wheel speeds individually (the "mecanum mix"), the platform can move forward, strafe sideways, rotate in place and drive diagonally. It cannot climb stairs or rough terrain.
A platform with four 100mm PU-roller mecanum wheels typically handles 40-80 kg payload on flat floors, depending on motor power, chassis rigidity and battery. Confirm your target payload with us before quoting the motor package.