Japanese Rovers

[lynca]

I got excited today about a new omni-directional ball wheel invented in Japan.

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2011/11/irex-2011-omni-crawler-robot-video.html

Some of my other favorite Japanese rover designs,

TriStar3 Rover
by Hirose group, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqDmSuFjYZg
Here is more detail about the design, http://tinyurl.com/6s6fen4

JAXA rover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h6R__chycA&feature=relmfu
details: http://www.jspec.jaxa.jp/e/research/index.html

[PAR_WIG1350]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97656&highlight=omni+tread

relevant^

[Chris_Elston]

I seen this in person in Japan at iREX, it was an interesting drive system for sure. I took a video of it too, but my video is not as good as the video already provided.

[Cem8301]

Thank you for posting these! I was very excited when I saw them a week ago. Someone on my team just emailed me this link: http://web.mit.edu/mobility/publications/WA2-4.pdf (http://web.mit.edu/mobility/publications/WA2-4.pdf)

It is the final report given by the Japanese creators. Very interesting read :)

[ajlapp]

I saw this a few weeks ago...very cool.

It reminds me of this (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/19142) our original Killough prototype that used spherical wheels.

Though our wheels weren't powered in both axis, the idea is similar.