pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

If I had to guess, I'd say it's a for a drive train that's similar to what 1629 did in 2008. They had 2 wheel pods that could steer left right. When both turned opposite of each other, the effect was a very tight turn radius (front rotates left, rear rotates right, causing the robot to make a sharp left turn).

There may be other considerations that I'm not thinking of, but 3x1.5 C-channel (0.2" wall for the legs, 1/8-3/16" wall for the base) is rigid enough for what you're doing there and also fits the 2.5" super shifter into the channel very nicely. It would also provide extra aluminum to support the rest of an FRC frame.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Swerve segway?

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

/Mind Blown

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Ackermann steering, or at least simplified car steering. Are you planning to put a differential of some sort in the middle?

Cool idea. It would definitely change things since turning at high speeds is more straight forward, but turning on a dime would probably be harder (or at least different from what people are used to...)

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Sadly no but that would be legit.


The wheels will be able to rotate more than the traditional ackerman steering.
We do hope to make tight turns like 1629 did in 2008...maybe even tighter :yikes:

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

That's total win right there. Well played, Mr. Blay.

However, I believe this is meant to be the first ever use of Necco Wafers as a lightweight sprocket replacement.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Yeah...we color every part a different color to help in figuring out what part is what.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Hey, does that actually turn far enough for the robot to translate sideways? I just realized that it looks like it could - it would be an ackerman-crab.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Aww...I was hoping more people would guess before someone got it right. Yes it is an ackerman-crab prototype.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

2012 game? :)

Drivers: "This'll be interesting!"
Builders: "Simple design, I love it!"
Programmers: "f*ck."

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

This is actually similar to what happened when I purposed the idea. I (driver) told our lead mechanical mentor (builder) who was like sweet and when I told our software lead (programmer) he was like get it done soon so we can have the code done by next game.

That was like 4 months ago :)

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Does this use true Ackerman geometry or do the wheels turn in a parallelogram configuration?

There's a big difference between the two at high speeds.

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

One thing I just noticed. It looks like on each side there are 3 miter gears, with two on the same shaft but on opposite sides of the wheel side gear. It seems like this wouldn't work and just lock up and/or shred the gears.

And I guess I'm a bit confused. It sounds like this is basically just a swerve implementation with wheels powered in pairs and perhaps steered in pairs as well. How exactly are you adding Ackermann functionality in a way that isn't already there mechanically?

Re: pic: Off season teaser 1
 

Heh, score. Now I will solve the game hints... *holds envelope to turban...*

But I agree with compwiztobe. This seems like an interesting way to handle both crab and ackermann, but it doesn't seem like it adds much to either.