Gyroscopic Steering?
 

At the Rochester Regional there was one team with a tiny gyro that was designed to assist with steering- but it had been removed due to weight restrictions. -by Tiny I mean 6lb, maybe 10" in diameter. Mechanical Gyro, not electronic.

A search for 'gyroscopic steering' or 'gyro steering' don't turn up any useful hits- so I'm hoping someone will have a link or post to exactly that.

We're going to off-season build up our gyro using one of the old 3.5" cims - lets see how that works!

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

522, also at Rochester, used a 17-lb flywheel running at 4 000 rev/min to keep them pointing straight. I can't vouch for its effectiveness, however.

That's sort of the opposite of what you're describing.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

Team 1388 in San Diego had a large flywheel on a gimbal. They seemed to turn very effectively with their gyro. Maybe they'll post more details???

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

I know 1388's gyro weighed about 11 or 12 pounds and was maybe 12 or 14 inches in diameter. It spun at about 2000 rpm. They demonstrated it for me while sitting on their cart, and it was able to jerk the cart left and right considerably. I'd definitely say it had some considerable effect.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

Elgin, I believe the original post is talking about a mechanical gyro. I think you are talking about the electrical gyro sensor.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

Yep.. I was thinking the KOP Gyro sensor, & not a home-made one. Oops! :o

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

we tried to have "gyroscopic steering" but then it was giving us problems so we decided to fix it in one place and use it as a flywheel and it helped us a lot

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

1388's gyro won a well-deserved technical award and definitely gave their machine an edge on the field.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

Yep, saw that one. Nice and straight- but not for steering.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

On the topic of Gyroscopes, we tried using one that the disc weight was near 10.5 lbs, and spun at a high rate of speed. I'm sure if Pat sees this thread he can give more accurate numbers. Anyways, we tried it, played with it all season, and it just was not effective enough, given our weight constraints. If we had a heavier disc we probably could have made it work.

+$0.02

-Nick

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

at first we had a custom made flywheel, but it was too heavy, then we pocket our more of it and it was still too heavy until we pocket out more and put holes on it until it weighted 4lbs 9oz power by a cim at full speed and it worked pretty well.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

More info on 1388's gyro: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=74250

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

Yep, you are probably talking about us. 7 lbs. steel, somewhere around 10" in diameter, attached to one of our old swerve modules from 2007 for easy rotation. It was powered by an AndyMark FP planetary at 1:1, spinning at somewhere around 3000 RPM. Rotation of the gyro assembly was done with a Globe motor.

We played with it on and off throughout the build season, trying to decide if it was worth the effort making a competition-legal assembly, before scrapping it somewhere around ship. It did have a pronounced effect on robot turning, but we deemed it not enough to be worth the extra weight, as well as the fact that it moved our centre of gravity much farther forward than we wanted. We brought the gyro assembly to FLR to display in case anyone was interested.

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

You can accomplish something very similar with an electrical gyro, too, if you're just interested in assisted turning. You should check out the MEMS gyroscopes on sparkfun.com.

We used one in a project at IIT where we performed controld drifts with an RC car: http://mechatronics.iit.edu/index.php?n=Fall08.Group2.

The gyroscope we used was the MLX90609-E2: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...oducts_id=8336. It measures up to 300d/s across 5V.

The thing is, the gyroscope is for heading only and won't detect tilt. We coupled it with an X/Y accelerometer for complete control of the vehicle.

I guess my question would be, why spend all the weight developing a large mechanical gryo?

Re: Gyroscopic Steering?
 

GCE...

I think I posted this link before on theory of operation.....

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4560708/Tu...on-Systems-8pp