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Re: Gyro Effect!
reading Joe's post I realized something awesome
if you had a single flywheel in your robot, with the axle horizontal pointing left and right
and the wheel spun backwards from the way the front wheel on a bike would (top of wheel moving towards the back of the robot)
then if you shot across the floor at a high speed and turned suddenly, the flywheel would exhert a torque that would try to lean your robot into the center of the turn (lean the way you are turning). This would counter the centripital force that would normally make your bot tip over if you turned too fast with forward motion.
that means your bot could corner at high speeds like it was on rails! (if the flywheel had enough angular momentum)
if you tried to turn fast while going backwards, however, the force would be against you, and your bot would easily flip over.
So it you designed a launcher wheel the right way, it would have a helpfull 'side effect' on the handling of your robot (and if you spin it the wrong way, yikes!)
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