Mecanum Wheel

An omnidirectional wheel ringed with angled rollers that lets a base drive sideways.

The Mecanum wheel was invented in the early 1970s by Bengt Ilon, an engineer at the Swedish company Mecanum AB. Its rim carries a ring of small rollers mounted at 45° to the wheel's axle, so when the wheel turns, the ground pushes back on it at an angle. Mount one independently driven Mecanum wheel at each corner of a base, and by combining each wheel's direction and speed, those angled forces combine into forward/backward motion, sideways translation, or rotation in place — full omnidirectional movement without needing to turn like a car. The trade-off is that the rollers carry limited load, are sensitive to uneven floors and gaps, slip easily, and give worse efficiency and positioning accuracy than ordinary wheels, so they're mostly used on smooth indoor floors: AGVs, mobile manipulation platforms, and robotics-competition vehicles.

ExampleDJI's RoboMaster S1 education robot uses four Mecanum wheels, letting it strafe sideways while rotating its turret independently.

Also called

Mecanum Drive

Related

Omni Wheel · Mobile Base (Chassis) · Swerve Drive · Differential Drive Base · Automated Guided Vehicle · Mobile Manipulator

Sources

Mecanum wheel - Wikipedia