Truly omnidirectional omniwheels?

[Cuog]

Not likely gonna need a patent for those hemispherical wheels we were working on them this summer: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=40770 but take a look at what we came up with its a cool design

[Exotria]

I don't think you guys are understanding my point... I know about the other omnidirectional drives(thanks for the links, however, I like information). My point is a way to make other omnidirectional drive trains by using another design of omniwheel. That... was my intended purpose for the topic, to ask whether another kind of omniwheel could be made that was more... well, omni. I know that all the other drives are successful, but those innovation awards are really appealing, and I think that another omnidirectional drive train could be made with my idea. I've already said it a few times- rotating rollers instead of just the wheels. Basically lets you have the miniwheels have their x axis rotate, with a little modification so that it can't rotate into the same direction as the wheel itself. This would allow there to be traction for the wheel going forward, and allow it to go any other direction without traction. That would allow wheels to face 45 degrees away from each other, , or any other degree, but not oppose each other. That would let there be more drive trains with opposing wheels. Which means more creativity.

[Mr. Freeman]

What about an omni wheel but instead of having a bunch of wheels around the main one, you just have a bunch of ball bearings stuck into it.

I'm not sure if something like this exists yet, I don't see why it shouldn't.

I see a problem with this though. If you were able to push an omni wheel in any direction, then it wouldn't be able to provide any traction when you rotated it with a motor. It would just spin in place.

Now, someone mentioned something about "the wheels on the bottom of teacher's desks."
I assume that you meant something like these:
http://www.photoflex.com/photoflex/p...300/caster.jpg
Those are called "casters", just for future reference.


EDIT: I just saw something about limiting the casters' rotation as so that they don't allow the wheel to spin in place. Ignore the second paragraph in this post.