# Motors for an omnidirectional RC toycar (with mecanum wheels)

First of all, apologies if this is an Arduino question. IMHO, I felt that the questions is more about motors and their comparison.

I'm trying to build an RC toycar using mecanum wheels.

The vehicle will have a standard 4 wheel configuration:

So far, I'm planning to use an arduino mega for the communication and control of the wheels.

In order to obtain the omnidirectional movement and rotation, I need 4 different motors (one for each wheel), to control the speed for each wheel.

I've sorted out communication with the remote control, and also figured out the relevant equations that determine the wheel speed based on the $$v_x$$, $$v_y$$ and $$\omega$$ (rotation). Now the only thing that remains is selecting the type of motors to use.

The main option I'm considering right now is using a stepper motor driver like A4988 with a NEMA 11 or 14.

The main benefits I see with this design its the following:

• I can control the speed for each motor.
• only two pins are required on the Arduino mega
• software control is well documented.

• not extremely efficient
• possibly not the maximum speed, nor torque

However, I'd like to ask what other motor designs/configurations should I consider (e.g. BLDC's, DC, servo with speed control). I would be very interested in a possible configuration and to its the relative benefits/drawbacks with respect to my baseline option with regard to the following parameters:

• pin requirements for control
• requirements for external electronic devices (eg. ESC)
• max speed
• max torque
• efficiency
• control documentation for arduino
• is it possible to control speed
• Is stepper motor driver like A4988 same as [A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier (Header Pins Soldered) ](pololu.com/product-info-merged/2980) Aug 20, 2020 at 11:36
• Yeap. Also other alternatives are the DRV8825 and a bunch lot of others : See this link for a comparison. This is from question Aug 20, 2020 at 11:53
• I have used some of the TI DRV88xx series drivers with a lot of success. I also have used a Toshiba motor drivers. I cannot remember the exact vintage. You can check out Stepper Motor Drivers. Also if you use a BLDC, DC motor then you most likely have to have some type of sensors Sep 16, 2020 at 11:28