The Mecanum wheel is a wheel that can initiate a vehicle in any direction. Called the Ilon wheel by Swedish inventor, Bengt Ilon, who had the idea in 1973 when he was an engineer with the Swedish company AB Mecanum.

It is a conventional wheel with a series of rollers associated with the region. These cylinders usually have an axis of rotation at 45 ° to the plane of the wheel. Called Omnidirectional Wheels because they can move in any direction. Here we see their application on small robotic vehicles of Spanish company Robotnik.