Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

The perfect configuration of wheels for tank-style steering is one wheel at each corner of a square. But because most robots are rectangular, teams solve this issue by using six wheels with the center wheel lowered. As a result the drive train functions as two four wheeled robots - tipping back and forth.

If you try and mount 4 wheels at each corner of the kitbot chassis you will quickly understand what I mean :D

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

Exactly. By lowering the center wheels, you achieve the turning characteristics of a 2WD robot with the drivability and traction of a 4WD robot.

When driving forward, gravity will "push" the robot onto the front wheels, and when driving backward, gravity will "push" the robot onto the rear wheels. But when you turn, in theory, the robot should support itself on it's 2 center wheels only, making turns a breeze.

You can't have too much rocker, or play in the wheels though. Somewhere between 1/4"-1/2" is ideal. Too much can be a problem.

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

Heres our latest :)

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

has anyone ever considered articulating steering?
or has someone done this before?
they use this in large farm type equipment...
sounds like this type would work good....

what do you think??

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

the problem this year with 6 wheel "skid steering" is it is hard to "drive it" around a corner fast . I think car type steering and high speed drifting are the key. If you go 6 sheel skid- you could possibility go with a button to steer you around a left hand turn. - when the button is pressed it runs the outside wheels faster to drive a smooth fast arc around the corner. When a human drives skid steer they generally tend to drive in short herky -jerky straight lines around a corner. I think some of the real good teams will have developed special steering software this year -

don't forget to put the 4 drive motors and battery on the same side in case you tend to tip with a big ball on top. latched in a gripper. and arm device.- that will get tippy a full speed.

how fast are people gearing for on single speed gear boxes- out there.??? 20- 25 ft/sec. one complete lap in 5-7 seconds if driven expertly.

good luck to all

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

i really wanted to try a car like steering system this year

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

les chortos: We're doing rear wheel drive (4 CIMs, 2 on each wheel through the toughboxes). In the front we have car type steering and we've calculated a min. of 15 fps, which we can likely get up to around 20.

Thats a minimum of 12 points during Hybrid, but it shouldn't be too hard to get 16 or even 20

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

We are a using a robot that drives from the middle, using two middle wheels that skid steer and stumps on the front and back. As soon as i get an image, i will post it

Re: Inventor Drawings/Concept sketches
 

U wanna kno what we r planning
Well u will see it at the nationals :)