Lots of Wheels and F = u x N

[archiver]

Posted by Patrick Dingle at 1/27/2001 6:01 PM EST


Other on team #639, Red B^2, from Ithaca High School and Cornell University.


In Reply to: Maybe Ken is pulling OUR leg!
Posted by Joe Johnson on 1/26/2001 10:02 PM EST:



I agree. However, with just a little more processing speed, i think it would be more than possible to make a 2-wheel balancing robot. This could be accomplished by moving the wheels forward in back, but it is much easier to make use of flywheels (due to physics of rotational dynamics). In fact, with a spinning flywheel, you could get the robot to stand up without falling for about 30+ seconds, without using a computer at all! After about 30 seconds, the robot would start to vacillate with larger and larger amplitude, so you'd have to use a motor or something to reset the position every 30 seconds. I once saw a demonstration of a system like this (although not on a robot). I wanted to try this on a FIRST robot, but i'm not sure how useful it would be.

Patrick

: I am parsing Ken's sentences pretty closely.

: It is clear that he INTENDS for us to think his robot
: is going to balance on two wheels ala the I-bot.

: But... I know two things: 1) This is a VERY difficult
: task that I seriously doubt a computer with a 25msec
: maximum sample rate can accomplish reliably. 2) Ken is
: a very clever person that is not only a great engineer
: but has a fine command of the language as well (he
: didn't win the Woodie Flowers Award for whistling Dixie ;-)

: I put these two facts together to believe that the
: Huskie Brigade (our cross town rivals / friends) are up
: to something sneaky, but not an I-bot like drive.

: Rest assured, I will be in the pits checking them out.

: Joe J.