How can we drive on this new floor?

[GregW11]

Originally Posted by johnr

Does this make any sense? Six wheeled bot. Four corner wheels driving forward and two side centered wheels driving backward as needed. Or, one wheel dead center of bot that would spin oppisite as needed. Then hand the whole thing over to programers. They can make it work.

I would guess this is roughly the setup you had in mind with wheels:

| |
_ _

| |
(with possibly more series of sideways and forward-facing wheels)
Vertical wheels are forward facing, horizontal are sideways facing, in case people don't know.

And that wouldn't exactly be difficult to program, but the operators would have to have incredible coordination, since assuming you're driving in tank mode it would require three joysticks (two for each set of wheels, plus one more to operate the side wheels.) Add more motors if you want additional sets of wheels, unless you can put three wheels on one motor...

Either that or have the side wheels spin in conjunction to the outputs of the joysticks (i.e. if left is spinning full forward and right is spinning full backward, the wheels will turn in the direction that will provide the most traction. I'd have to run a simulation to determine exactly which would be the best way, whether you want more turning force, causing the trailer to possibly fishtail, or less to stabilize it.)
Again, not apparently difficult to program.

edit: (with random concerns I think of)
The only thing I could see right now is collisions of of the chains (if they're used to provide the moving force for the wheels) from the forward/sideways wheels. Seems it could be remedied by using varying radii with the grabbers on the wheels (spaced the name of them) that move the chain.