Chief Delphi - Experimental Ball Drive

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- - Experimental Ball Drive (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40135)

Re: Experimental Ball Drive

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sepsis900

On a tangent, the entire concept of a "ball drive" has turned into the subject of many immature jokes. I was wondering if the Teknokats had to deal with people making cracks about the robot's "balls", or how the team had the "balls" to make such a "ballsy" robot, or how you have to take a look at the robot's "balls" if you want to understand it.

actually a ball drive isnt the worst for jokes. our current OCCRA robot sucks balls. 3 to be exact. so going off the G rating, our robot can suck balls from a guy and a half. and these are big balls. like 13 inch diameter balls.
well you can go on about this but i htink the point is, our robot sucks balls. and its good at it.

but anyways. has anyone considered pneumatic balls in their ball drive? would be quite interesting seeing the robot bounce along. would have more surface area to contact with the ground and the drive roller.

on a completely sidenote.. are ladybugs massproducing now? they seem to be around my house at least.. :confused:

Re: Experimental Ball Drive

Just a question for you to consider. Why a ball drive?
Holonomic drives, mechanum drives, kilo-drives (3-wheel holonomic), kiwi drives, etc all acheive the same effect. You claimed that a holonomic drive would be harder to make, but I beleive that it would actually be easier. Last year we used a variant of a holonomic design (we basically took holonomic wheels and tilted them down to 15ish deg.).
http://www.invisiblerobot.com/roboti.../p1060718.html

Our design only took a mill and a lathe to create, and if you didn't have the tilt, it would be even easier to make.

It's perfectly fine to pursue a ball drive, but I just want to make sure you have thought all the possibilities completly through for the system that will be best suited for your abilities and equipment. Each system has its own advantages and disadvantages. All of them could be adapted to deal with inclines through the use of suspension systems, or cams, but those systems would make it much much harder to build and design.