pic: If you had made it out of steel . . . . .
 

this is true. I should have done homework instead.

:eek: Wow!... You deserve about 30 bazillion high fives right now.. that is the first multi-directional lego drive I've ever seen.. very, very nice. Now, I'd love to see a middle school team with something like that... heh a middle school lego team w/ a lego omni drive.. now that'll be the day... ;)

Hell, I understood the concept the first time I saw it and built it as soon as I realized that it may be possible in LEGO. The hard part was finding all the little peices. Middle schoolers (with proper support, encouragement, etc.) should be able to do that no problem.


The only problem is that the RCX only has three motor outs, so it wouldn't be able to do anything but drive around unless you were really clever and made some spring-loaded stuff.

I've seen one before http://home.arcor.de/markus.matern/R...orm/index.html but you still deserve the high fives. Maybe not 30 bazillion but a bunch anyway.:)

I remember seeing that drive base in the past, but I had forgotten about it. Mine was probably easier, but I bet his is more robust.

Too bad I don't have six of any big wheels. I could probably do something like that, though, and I might, if this one is having problems. I like my center column, though. heh. thanks for the link.

So... my question: how much power does a system like this have? Do you lose any power because of its triangular orientation?

Woa ! Now that's awesome too.. I wonder if there'd be some way to only run it w/ two motors.. like make one of those non-powered so it just slides w/ the others.. but then it wouldn't really be a versatile.. hmm....

Given the complexity of such a system, I don't think that would work too well. To get the full flexiblity it offers, you need 3 motors. Besides, what would the advantage be in powering 2/3 of such a system, over just a standard 2WD system?

if your wheels are good and the bearnings in them are efficient, no more power loss than your standard tank drive going straight.

What you have to remember, though, is that your 'real' speed will be higher than the speed a normal wheel would go for the same RPM, so you want to wheel spinning a little slower than you need . .

basically, the drive base is a gearing up, less power, more speed for the same shaft RPM.

otherwise, if your omni wheels are good, the only disadvantage is working with such a weird drive base and explaining it a million times to the curious.

That has got to be one bumpy ride! :)

this has nothing to do with this topic but take a look at my lego copy machine!

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=41114

Vectors. If you want to calculate force in one direction, you reduce the vectors into their components.

Re: pic: If you had made it out of steel . . . . .
 

actually, if you see the tech discussion forums I had a big argument with some guy about power loss in the killough.

With a triangular killough you do lose power because your motors fight each other, but in a quad wheel/square killough no power is lost.