View Single Post
  #9   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 11-02-2013, 20:55
Jibri Wright's Avatar
Jibri Wright Jibri Wright is offline
Registered User
FRC #1781 (Electric Eagles)
Team Role: CAD
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: Chicago
Posts: 179
Jibri Wright will become famous soon enough
Re: How can you make turning smoother?

Quote:
Originally Posted by dtengineering View Post
Hey... one of the new Calgary teams! Welcome aboard, and welcome to Chief Delphi. I'm hoping to get out to Calgary this year, and look forward to seeing your machine.

We had this problem with our first robot, a four wheel drive machine... it worked great on our cement and linoleum floors at school, but when we finally got to Toronto and put it on carpet... we couldn't turn worth a darn.

The problem is inherent to skid steering... the front and rear of the robot needs to skid sideways, in order for the robot to turn. Since we design the robots to have high traction wheels (which were great for pushing) they were awful for turning. We had to reduce the coefficient of friction of one set of wheels so that they could slide sideways.

With a six or eight wheel drive (which we eventually switched to) the trick is to lower the centre wheels... this reduces the "normal force" (hey, physics in action) on the front and rear wheels, making it easier for them to skid sideways.

If you are locked into a four wheel drive design, you might want to consider some omni wheels... http://www.andymark.com/Omni-s/51.htm they also work great with six and eight wheel drive machines.
Good luck! Hope you get the machine running well soon.

Jason
It doesnt cause the normal force to decrease. What happens is that the centripetal force when pivoting on the dropped wheels causes the outer wheels to lift and cause them to be in a state of balance with each other. While pivoting the outer wheels are applying no force to the ground or in other words not touching.