Implementing Traction Control for an advantage in the 2009 game

[Doug Leppard]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Has anyone tried simply detecting a sudden increase in drive wheel speed and modulating motor control based on that? I'm dying to see if it'll work for simple straight acceleration....haven't conned the electronics/programming team into getting the encoders wired up and trying to write some code yet...

This is what we have done. that was the reason for our three wheel bot proto type that I posted.

We allow up to 20% slipage of the drive wheel, if it goes above that the computer backs off the power.

Now the driver never has to worry about pushing power too far, the computer controls that both in accelerating and de-accelerating. I saw the test bed this weekend, pretty cool.

We haven't put it in the four wheel bot yet, but I suspect it will help our turns also.

I think the bots are drivable without traction control, but it makes a big difference and takes the load off the driver.