Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigHickman
IMO, any reasonable drive system will be able to handle that without issue. We're going to see a lot of systems that cannot, regrettably. It would be best to have the ability to get up no matter what area is open.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gorrilla
A well designed drive-train should have no problems....
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EDIT: I'm assuming we were talking about driving onto the platform from the bump. If this wasn't the intent then the following paragraphs will be sound confusing and be embarrassing for the poster.
I think you might be underestimating the difficulty of this task by just a little. Atleast if you're thinking of taking it straight on, straddling the bump. Consider:
If the bump was a 13.5" plateau as wide as your robot, you'd have a 7.5" vertical cliff in front of you to scale. A cliff of Teflon-like UHMW Polyethylene. Climbing it dead on is possible, but you'll need pretty sticky wheels to get enough purchase to get your front wheels up.
Of course, the bump's top isn't as wide as your robot. It's only 12" wide, so unless the inside of your wheelbase is 12", you'll actually start even lower and have an even taller cliff. Specifically, you'll have an inch more to climb for every two inches your wheelbase is over 12. Given that your bumpers start at a max of 11", the widest the inside of your wheelbase can be is 19". So all your reasonable drivetrain designers should keep their wheelbases reasonably narrow and resist the natural urge to make them wide.
So, I think climbing the platform straight on from the side is not something you can pull off with just a thrown together drivetrain. Now, I'll admit I haven't had a chance to look at how a bot could use the 45 of the bump to its advantage to get wheels on the top of the platform. It's possible that the correct approach vector will make the climb pretty easy for a multiwheel, very low CoM robot. Well, relatively easy, at any rate. I think you're pretty much certain to be pivot on 2 wheels for a fair amount of time during the attempt. Which is probably survivable for a multiwheel, low CoM robot. Which, unfortunately, doesn't sound quite like any reasonable drivetrain.