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Unread 02-06-2005, 21:59
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Alex.Norton Alex.Norton is offline
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Re: Most Impressive/Advanced/Unique/Cool drivetrain you've ever seen

Quote:
Originally Posted by santosh
Okay thanks a lot. What are the advantages of that over 4 wheels? I guess you use lss motors, but isn't it more stable with 4 wheels?
actually when it came to making the drive train for our robot this year it gave us far fewer problems with basic drive than our previous drive trains had (we tried to add extra function that our gyro wasn't acurate enough for). The programing is relatively simple (just sine and cosine) and the mechanics was almost simpler to build than the drive train given in the kit, we had only one custom part per wheel which could be made in a half hour on a lathe which we used to adapt the wheel to the shaves of the kit transmit ions.

The other trouble that arises from three wheels is that to move forward (if there is a solid arm on the bot) you must drive one wheel across its face. This means that if it hits any bumps (especially if there is a large load on it) then it is far more likely to cause the robot to trip and fall. The other option is to have the wheels drive towards the center instead of perpendicular to it and while this type means that the robot is less likely to trip you can't actively turn the base and anything hitting the robot will turn is.

About four wheels yes they will never all touch the floor properly if they are simply shimmed it is just as easy to put a suspension on them than to try to solve the problems faced by a three wheeled design. This is why when we found that we couldn't control our chassis because one wheel would loose traction and it would steer off to the side instead of making a new chassis or modifying the one we had we put a suspension on the wheels. It is now extremely easy and fun to drive while it is still stable and it doesn't trip over its own wheels.

Alex