Quote:
Originally posted by abe D
with the 4 wheel holmonic drive how will it affect performance if you have 2 different sets of motors i.e. the chips and the drills?
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Well, you can gear the motors so that the speeds are approximately the same. It shouldn't affect the performance at all. The only time you'll see problems is when you try to push something using that angled side between the omniwheels. One motor will have more torque than the other and your robot might move crooked. In fact matching the speed/torques perfectly isn't a limitation in this design. If you wish, you can have it move forward faster than it goes sideways.
Moving forward/backward, left, right and diagonal and turning should be perfectly fine. The coding would be a bit tricky, but an experienced programmer can figure out how to create a 2 joystick drive that utilizes all the holonomic functions. It wouldn't be that difficult. I can't think of any way to control all three coordinates, x direction, y direction, and angle (turning) without using 2 joysticks. You could possibly do it with one joystick if you use the triggers or a separate mechanism to control the turning.
The biggest problem is making an Omniwheel with lots of traction. These new TechnoKat omniwheels look perfect... You don't have to worry about someone overpowering your robot because you have the other omniwheels pushing against any side forces.
There are a few things I'd change in the design on that page. The drill motors have timing (they spin faster running CCW than CW), so in the current setup the robot will run crooked when going forward. This can be easily solved by putting both drill motors on the front half of the robot (put the drill motor on the right side in front of the sprocket rather than behind it).