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Unread 23-11-2006, 09:38
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Re: What type of drive train is the most maneuverable?

Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Krass
All other things being equal, a typical six wheel drive along the long axis will have a shorter effective wheelbase than a four wheel drive arranged on the short axis.
Uhhhmmmmm, not so fast there. As a general statement, this is not true.

It all depends on how you are going to define a "typical six wheel drive" and what assumptions and caveats you are putting on that definition. I will maintain that in a "typical" six-wheel drive, all six wheels are co-planar. In that case, the wheelbase of the six-wheel drive is established by the Conservative Support Polygon, which is defined by the four outer wheels. As specified in the original statement, the wheels are arranged along the long axis of the robot. The four outer wheels determine the resulting wheelbase, which by definition is longer than a four-wheel drive arranged along the short axis of the robot.

This fundamental truism is only modified if the definition of a "typical" six-wheel drive is altered to promote non-standard configurations. For example, the common practice of moving the middle pair of wheels into a non-planar configuration. On a hard planar surface, this causes the robot to ride on the middle set of wheels and one of the "end" set of wheels. Only four wheels support the robot, not six. Thus, the wheelbase becomes approximately half of the long dimension of the robot. But this is actually no longer a true six-wheel mobility system. It is a set of two four-wheel systems that share a common pair of wheels (the center ones). In this case, you lose many of the advantages of a six-wheel drive (ie. distribution of weight across more points of contact with the floor, greater stability across the longer wheelbase, etc.).

-dave
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