Segway announces new Robotic Mobility Platforms

[Elgin Clock]

http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/05/19/segway-robotic-mobility-platforms.aspx

Oooh... Mecanum! Nice. :cool:

[acdcfan259]

Wonder where the idea for Mecanums came from??? hmmmm

[ebarker]

Wonder where the idea for Mecanums came from??? hmmmm

Since you asked, here is the history: Mecanum Wheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel)

You will see more interesting information in the 'External Links' section also.

[Greg Needel]

Wonder where the idea for Mecanums came from??? hmmmm

Actually these wheels appear to be directly from FIRST. Neil Rosenberg who works for FIRST engineering and is a former mentor of team 40 offered mecanums up for team a few years ago (look at team 40's 2006 robot). http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=425233&postcount=4


These appear to be the same wheel that segway is now using. From the way this machine looks it appears like segway just took some of their standard gearboxes and attached Neil's wheels, with some controller, using the standard segway batteries.

look at this side by side comparison.
http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/04/segwaytank.jpghttp://www.robogreg.com/Mechanum.jpg

[Francis-134]

I'm glad someone else thought those were familiar. After we used the wheels, we made a few modifications like drilling holes in all the rollers for weight, making our own hubs that had significantly less material in them, and putting groves in the rollers so that we had better traction as we climbed the wicked steep ramp (06).

Heres a picture of them:
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a216/Ninjaofthenorth/DennisPictures025.jpg

[Dan Petrovic]

Heh. This is old news to our team.

I saw this platform back in February when practicing in the Segway facility. :D