Japanese Rovers
 

I got excited today about a new omni-directional ball wheel invented in Japan.

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2011/11...bot-video.html

Some of my other favorite Japanese rover designs,

TriStar3 Rover
by Hirose group, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqDmSuFjYZg
Here is more detail about the design, http://tinyurl.com/6s6fen4

JAXA rover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h6R_...feature=relmfu
details: http://www.jspec.jaxa.jp/e/research/index.html

Re: Japanese Rovers
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ght=omni+tread

relevant^

Re: Japanese Rovers
 

I seen this in person in Japan at iREX, it was an interesting drive system for sure. I took a video of it too, but my video is not as good as the video already provided.

Re: Japanese Rovers
 

Thank you for posting these! I was very excited when I saw them a week ago. Someone on my team just emailed me this link: http://web.mit.edu/mobility/publications/WA2-4.pdf

It is the final report given by the Japanese creators. Very interesting read :)

Re: Japanese Rovers
 

I saw this a few weeks ago...very cool.

It reminds me of this our original Killough prototype that used spherical wheels.

Though our wheels weren't powered in both axis, the idea is similar.