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Re: pic: Mecanum Wheel Module Gearbox
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
Good points. Programmers also need a robot to program, which they often don't get until it's about time to put it in the crate!
Our team made a demonstration holonomic drivetrain in the 2005 off-season, and our programmers drove that until we got the competition robot ready. Of course they still needed some time  to adapt to the actual robot's quirks. And of course they could have used more time than they got.
These are the facts of life for software engineers: (1) you will be the last member of the design team to get your hands on the system, and (2) it will be your fault if it doesn't work.
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We avoided this problem this year (after deciding on kickoff weekend to go with mechanum drive) by building a drive-train quickly in 1 week while software worked on the code. Then we let software do as much as they wanted in terms of code testing to make sure that it would work. The early production time frame for our drive-train made certain that that we could switch back to 6 wheel if software couldn't get mechanum code to work. As it turned out, the saturday after kickoff, at about 6:00 pm, about ten minutes after integrating code and drivetrain, this was our result (link at end of post). Pretty amazing result for the turnaroud time. We left it with software for a few days so they could tweak things, and the design/fab team continued on with the rest of the 'bot. This video was taken before we changed gear ratios for a considerably faster robot. We figured we'd start slow, and work out the kinks with the code, then speed it up. And sorry for the bad quality, it was taken with my cell phone.
http://home.comcast.net/~ericmontague/mecanum_drive.mov
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-Eric
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Current WPI Student and college mentor to 1540
1540:
2008 Portland Regional Winner
2008 Portland Regional Engineering Inspiration Award
2007 Pacific Northwest Regional Finalist
2007 Pacific Northwest Reigonal Chariman's Award
Last edited by monty1540 : 05-03-2007 at 01:12.
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