Omnidirectional drivetrains

[patrickrd]

I know there was at minimum one team who applied this technology on their own last year (my apologies for forgetting who you are as it was quite impressive!)... but this type of drive system should be of common knowledge in any robotics competition as it provides 3 complete degrees of freedom: x-translation, y-translation, and rotation, all simultaneously and independently controlled. It's existed in industrial applications for quite some time and in other robotics competitions such as robocup for several years.
Last year in order to both (a) pass my classes and (b) participate in FIRST simultaneously, I used a required project in my robotics class to research how this drive system might be installed on an approximately FIRST-sized robot with approximate FIRST rules and material. Please note I worked on a four wheel version, which deviates from the classic three wheels on most omnidrive bots. I did this since FIRST robots have a history of falling over and three wheels could be detrimentally unstable with a high center of mass and high maneuverability. The major roadblock for *actually* using this design is that you would have to use two different sets of motors such that the wheels rotate with the same angular velocities for a given torque... My design uses four identical drill motors, which has classicly been illegal according to FIRST rules.

Anyway, I've posted the paper online (link is below) which should give any of your teams a good understanding of how it works and what you need to do to get a prototype working of some sort. I'd love to see some teams apply this technology successfully! If you have any questions feel free to email me at prd8@cornell.edu as I do not check these forums regularly.

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/...bot/report.htm

Good luck to all teams in 2003!