First time build, seeking knowledge and advice...

[DaveL]

Hi Glenn:
You have what sounds like an interesting project.

Like others have said your device will be different from our competition in that it will be outside and on uneven terrain. Those are 2 huge requirements.

Like all new projects, I would start by defining relevant requirements.
For example:
- How tight a turn will your robot be expected to take?
- What is the obstacle height needed to traverse?
- How far will it need to travel?
- Payload weight and size?
- Ride quality or how smooth does the ride need to be?
- How firm is the ground or how much wheel / track surface area is needed to support you fully loaded bot?

I agree with Geetwo about a simple truck style steering. But based on your requirements you might find that you will need something closer to a 4 wheel powered monster truck or something closer to a Mars Robot. I would look at model RC trucks for inspiration.
http://www.hobbytron.com/RCTrucks.html#
http://robogames.net/rules/magellan.php

I've found that its helpful to record all of your team's assumptions, goals, requirements and design decisions as these can later be used to answer the question of why was this approach taken. If one of the team's assumptions change, you can back up, change the related requirements and go forward with a better design. This info can also be very helpful for developing a presentation after the project has been completed.

Best of luck. Let us know what you come up with and how it works.

[roboticsnoob808]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Hi Glenn:
You have what sounds like an interesting project.

Like others have said your device will be different from our competition in that it will be outside and on uneven terrain. Those are 2 huge requirements.

Like all new projects, I would start by defining relevant requirements.
For example:
- How tight a turn will your robot be expected to take?
- What is the obstacle height needed to traverse?
- How far will it need to travel?
- Payload weight and size?
- Ride quality or how smooth does the ride need to be?
- How firm is the ground or how much wheel / track surface area is needed to support you fully loaded bot?

I agree with Geetwo about a simple truck style steering. But based on your requirements you might find that you will need something closer to a 4 wheel powered monster truck or something closer to a Mars Robot. I would look at model RC trucks for inspiration.
http://www.hobbytron.com/RCTrucks.html#
http://robogames.net/rules/magellan.php

I've found that its helpful to record all of your team's assumptions, goals, requirements and design decisions as these can later be used to answer the question of why was this approach taken. If one of the team's assumptions change, you can back up, change the related requirements and go forward with a better design. This info can also be very helpful for developing a presentation after the project has been completed.

Best of luck. Let us know what you come up with and how it works.

TYVM, DaveL!!

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated and I will definitely take into consideration the above listed information in regards to our requirements. And thanks for the helpful links!!

[IKE]

So, I do not know that I would recommend suspension and a lot of complication.

With such a small wheel-base, CG will be important, and in general, you should be able to drive around most troublesome ground.

I would suggest looking at self propelled lawnmowers for possible architectures and thoughts on structure.
http://www.blackanddecker.com/produc...mower/spcm1936

A concern I have is actually footprint vs. weight vs. soil (terramechanics). Think about it from a bike tire standpoint. A lot of mountain bikes operate with roughly 30 PSI tires and thus ground pressure around 30 psi. This is fine for paved, gravel road and hard pack, but soft sand and/or dirt or mud can be difficult.
Comparatively, many tractors or off road machinery tend to operate below 15 PSI for ground pressure. If you are trying to traverse Mud, you may need to go as low as 11 PSI ground pressure.
Thus for 200 pounds, you would need about 18 inches of srface area in contact with the ground.
To get down to these low levels, you typically need either balloon tires or tracks.
IE a 4 wheel solution would need over 4 in^2 per tire. 6 wheel would be 3 in^2 per tire.

A 6WD chassis with these wheels:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0970.htm
would be pretty reasonable to implement. They even have a base chassis at that website as well as adapters that should be close to meeting your needs. Similar to this one:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2289.htm

I think you could make either of these concepts work relatively well. If you are OK with a person manipulating controls, I personally would start with the self propelled mower and double the width of the wheels as well as ad more robust axle attachments to handle the 200 lbs vs the 90 lbs it was initially design for.
With it being a walk behind, the human would also add stabalizing properties when maneuvering which I suspect will be critical (with a base of 24x26, you center of gravity will need to be below about 12" of height assuming it is relatively centered. This is pretty low for anything that heavy, and also often with solar installations, a little height is very helpful towards avoiding shadows).

[gblake]

I'll bet that driving over real terrain and obstacles, and getting enough endurance from your battery(s) (affected by battery storage, motor efficiency, payload power needs, and misc) will dominate your physics problems, if you have to traverse non-trivial distances or stay on-station 24x7. But they won't be your biggest problem (see last paragraph).

So,

• Build miniature prototypes out of wood, VEX/Tetrix parts, etc.
• Build a full-sized, full-weight prototype out of 2x4s and your chosen wheels/tracks (see Ike's post).
• Drive (tow, push, whatever) the prototypes outside.
• Use easily-revised, modular framing for the real thing. It will need to be adjusted as you iteratively design/integrate/test

To solve any other problems, if you burrow deeply enough into the archives here, you can probably find a workable solution.

Also, it's a good rule of thumb to estimate project size/complexity by the number of interfaces (mechanical, electrical, software) you have to design and/or implement, instead of counting the number of subsystems that exist. It's good to pay attention to both, but it's the interfaces that will eat you alive (in part by causing both your time spent searching for or choosing parts, and your resulting parts-count to explode).

Also, everything takes about 4 times as long as you think it will/should; and simple 10-minute tasks often balloon to take 2-4 hours by the time you are finished discussing them, setting-up for them, doing them, testing them, and cleaning up after them. The clock is your biggest enemy, not robot-physics.

Blake

[roboticsnoob808]

Originally Posted by gblake

I'll bet that driving over real terrain and obstacles, and getting enough endurance from your battery(s) (affected by battery storage, motor efficiency, payload power needs, and misc) will dominate your physics problems, if you have to traverse non-trivial distances or stay on-station 24x7. But they won't be your biggest problem (see last paragraph).

So,

• Build miniature prototypes out of wood, VEX/Tetrix parts, etc.
• Build a full-sized, full-weight prototype out of 2x4s and your chosen wheels/tracks (see Ike's post).
• Drive (tow, push, whatever) the prototypes outside.
• Use easily-revised, modular framing for the real thing. It will need to be adjusted as you iteratively design/integrate/test

To solve any other problems, if you burrow deeply enough into the archives here, you can probably find a workable solution.

Also, it's a good rule of thumb to estimate project size/complexity by the number of interfaces (mechanical, electrical, software) you have to design and/or implement, instead of counting the number of subsystems that exist. It's good to pay attention to both, but it's the interfaces that will eat you alive (in part by causing both your time spent searching for or choosing parts, and your resulting parts-count to explode).

Also, everything takes about 4 times as long as you think it will/should; and simple 10-minute tasks often balloon to take 2-4 hours by the time you are finished discussing them, setting-up for them, doing them, testing them, and cleaning up after them. The clock is your biggest enemy, not robot-physics.

Blake

TYVM for the input and advice, Blake!!

[roboticsnoob808]

Originally Posted by IKE

So, I do not know that I would recommend suspension and a lot of complication.

With such a small wheel-base, CG will be important, and in general, you should be able to drive around most troublesome ground.

I would suggest looking at self propelled lawnmowers for possible architectures and thoughts on structure.
http://www.blackanddecker.com/produc...mower/spcm1936

A concern I have is actually footprint vs. weight vs. soil (terramechanics). Think about it from a bike tire standpoint. A lot of mountain bikes operate with roughly 30 PSI tires and thus ground pressure around 30 psi. This is fine for paved, gravel road and hard pack, but soft sand and/or dirt or mud can be difficult.
Comparatively, many tractors or off road machinery tend to operate below 15 PSI for ground pressure. If you are trying to traverse Mud, you may need to go as low as 11 PSI ground pressure.
Thus for 200 pounds, you would need about 18 inches of srface area in contact with the ground.
To get down to these low levels, you typically need either balloon tires or tracks.
IE a 4 wheel solution would need over 4 in^2 per tire. 6 wheel would be 3 in^2 per tire.

A 6WD chassis with these wheels:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0970.htm
would be pretty reasonable to implement. They even have a base chassis at that website as well as adapters that should be close to meeting your needs. Similar to this one:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2289.htm

I think you could make either of these concepts work relatively well. If you are OK with a person manipulating controls, I personally would start with the self propelled mower and double the width of the wheels as well as ad more robust axle attachments to handle the 200 lbs vs the 90 lbs it was initially design for.
With it being a walk behind, the human would also add stabalizing properties when maneuvering which I suspect will be critical (with a base of 24x26, you center of gravity will need to be below about 12" of height assuming it is relatively centered. This is pretty low for anything that heavy, and also often with solar installations, a little height is very helpful towards avoiding shadows).

Very helpful links and useful information here as I was hoping I could build a 6-wheel setup w/o suspension. And those tires are exactly what I was leaning towards. Thank you, very much, IKE!!

[IKE]

You may want to look at some of the robots made here as well:
http://www.igvc.org/

They are relatively sow moving autonomous robots that travel over grassy fielded areas with obstacles.
Watch video to see who handles well, and you might get some good ideas.

[MrBasse]

After building this

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img...51686d05_l.jpg

I can tell you that you need more than one battery if you plan to have this thing run actively for more than an hour. Pushing 200 lbs around isn't much fun and an extra 40 lbs of battery would give you a safety net.

Ours is a six wheel drop center design using wheelchair tires mounted onto wheels from Harbor Freight. A little welding and a sprocket mounts nicely to them, and they only cost $4 each. Upgrading bearings is a must, but the benefit is that they are steel and we don't have to worry about cracks or issues with rough operation that will happen off of a traditional playing field. Ours is only two wheel drive and we have issues with spinning tires in grass. Four or Six wheel drive would be nice even if it would hurt battery life a bit more.

[gblake]

So, maybe what you want to do is buy one or two motorized wheel chairs and/or Rascal scooters; cut them up, weld the resulting parts into a 24"x36" frame, adapt the control and power systems to the new configuration, and call it a day?

[roboticsnoob808]

Originally Posted by gblake

So, maybe what you want to do is buy one or two motorized wheel chairs and/or Rascal scooters; cut them up, weld the resulting parts into a 24"x36" frame, adapt the control and power systems to the new configuration, and call it a day?

Why didn't you suggest this from the start?! Problem solved!