Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

The particular design we developed was very easy to build. There are only three machined parts in each drive module (the modified gear, the structural support strut, and a small bracket that holds the load bearing in place). The drive modules can be used in either the cambered holonomic drive configuration (our version) or the traditional orthogonal holonomic drive configuration. In fact, we used the modules in the traditional configuration on our test robot for software development. So the answer is that it didn't take any longer to make this version vs. a traditional version. With regard to linear speed of the robot, it was designed for 10 ft/second. But it was never actually timed to determine real performance, so we can't attest to the actual speed.

-dave

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

http://www.invisiblerobot.com/roboti.../p1010464.html
http://www.invisiblerobot.com/roboti.../p1010469.html
Those two pictures show some of the design shots of the drive system, hopefully giving a bit better idea of what we did. In simple terms, its a normal holonomic drive tilted on it's side.
*edit*
http://www.firstrobotics.uwaterloo....vetrains022.jpg
Although it's only an external view, 33's 4 speed, shift on the fly, automatic transmission last year kicked butt.*edit*

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

Not far away from team 116, Team 612 worked on their Aukerman Steering Drive System.
Unfortunatly, only 2 days beofre the ship date, Team 612 end up breaking some of the major parts of the drive system during the DC scrimmage clash. Its kind of sad story. Team 612 worked all six weeks wokring on this drive system, and then they have to switch back to tank drive within 48 hours of time span.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

Hi;

Couple of questions for you; why the 82 degrees (I have some ideas, by why speculate)? The second is how did you control it? We went with an orthogonal holonomic drive this year, but discovered the unfortunate fact that 3 points define a plane, but 4 are over-constrained. Which is to say every time we hit an uneven spot in the floor whoever had the traction won and the robot went in that direction. We solved it in two ways, first added a yaw sensor so at least it knew what a straight line was, and then added a suspension so that all wheels maintained traction. This design looks even more interesting because it is inscribing arcs; at least ours was in a vector.

Thanks.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

I'm very surprised that no one has mentioned 47's swerve drive from the year 2000. It was, at the time, revolutionary. By todays standards, it may not seem all that cool, but 5 years ago, when it was one of the first strafing robots in FIRST, it was really something else. It gave 47 a clear advantage that year and served as the inspiration to many future swerve drives. It was well before my time coming to FIRST but I'm still inspired.

My thanks for FIRST Mechanism library for the pics

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

As you can imagine, a completely flat omni-wheel wouldnt work properly, and because the surface isnt entirely flat, if you had your tilt too low, the same problems would occur. You don't want the wrong omni wheels to be toching the ground, or else you'd get unecisarry scrubbing of the wheels. So, we places the wheels at enough of an angle to eliminate that, but still greatly improve our stability.
We had some issues with wheels getting more traction than others, especially when we we're driving on and off the loading zones. But we solved it by "shimming" the wheels so all four we're completly co-planar with the floor, and by using the white neoprene wheels.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

I like 71 in 2002, 111, 25, 16, and 65 in 2003, 111, I forgot what team number it was (im saddend now) but at detroit that had three front wheels that spun at one point, 65, and 2005 i liked 79, 71, 111, and once again 65. I love our drivetrain.

2003
111: http://www.wildstang.org/gallery/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=2003_electrica l&id=2003_02_01_Electrical_005
http://www.wildstang.org/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=2003_electrical&id=20 03_02_01_Electrical_011
25: http://firstrobotics.net/03gallery/i...0025-1_jpg.jpg
16: http://firstrobotics.net/03gallery/i...0016-1_jpg.jpg
65: if you seen this years drive trainf, picture that but faster and cool wheels

2004
111: http://www.wildstang.org/main/video.php that video should explain it
???: urg what was that team number
65: I have noticed that we have no pictures of our robots it past years any where to be found. I want to change that.

2005
65: finally http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?s=&action=single&picid=11238&directio n=DESC&sort=date&perrow=4&trows=10&quiet=Verbose
79: http://krunch79.com/gallery/displayi...?album=7&pos=8
http://krunch79.com/gallery/displayi...?album=7&pos=7
71: i con't find any good pictures of them
111: http://www.wildstang.org/gallery/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=2005_NBC_Demo& id=IMG_2493

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

Hey We did something similar but i need to find the pictures for it, Do you have any sensor feed back on your robot to control its direction? contact me and we'll compare notes.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

This year, what we did is we set all of our 4 omniwheels in the corner of our bot and set them at 45 degres. This allowed us to be able to strafe and spin in place and spin while moving forward. I think we had 8 ft per second.

We were the team that spun in circles for 2 matches on the Newton Field this year. We also had a piston in the middle of the robot that pushed down which cause all of our drive modules to expand. It gave us 4 inches on each side. This helped us with out stability.

We used field forward, and the fact that there were so many factors that affected our compass, we had to turn to robot forward, and this caused us to be bad at controlling our robot. But overall, it was cool

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

At nationals there was the coolest drivetrain i have ever seen. I think it was teem 738 or 278 or 378, I don't remember. they were in Newton and their colors were yellow and purple. They made their own wheel system and they called it Jester Drive. It was really called Mechanum Drive, some brilliant swedish design. It allowed the robot to go in every direction depending upon how the wheels turned. It was the coolest thing i had ever seen...way cooler than omni wheels or tracks or 6wd or anything i had ever seen.
You guys know who you are...it was insane.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

That's team 357. While a mechanum drive is quite impressive, teams have done them before.
Holonomic drives, such as 1002's, and 116's. or kiwi drives like 857's also can drive in any direction instantly.

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

Can some one please explain Kiwi Drive?

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

Couple Videos:
http://stuweb.ee.mtu.edu/~alkrajew/FIRST/kiwi.mpg
http://www.team229.org/site/video/11...kiwiparody.wmv

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

56k+ Online Videos = No Solution lol Thanks though

Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen
 

its similar to what your team (1002) did, except instead of 4 omni-wheels 90 degrees apart, it had 3 omniwheels 120 degrees apart.