pic: 6 wheel drive with a suspension

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by joeweber

The reason we do not drive the wheels straight off the Bainbot shaft is to allow for straight driving. You know that the motors drive faster one direction than the other direction. Using them on helical gears the way we are make the motors go the same direction when the robot is going forward thus the motors are running at the same speed. So when we program for autonomous we will not have any problems with it pulling to the right or left.. Also note that when the robot goes sideways one set of motors will reverse so they will be going the same direction again allowing for straight travel.

Four encoders and a few dozen lines of code are a lot lighter and cheaper than four sets of helical gears.

Especially with our new processor, there should be no problems keeping up with all the data.

[joeweber]

Originally Posted by Alex.Norton

One thing to note here. If your pivoting the "modules" about the steel tubes (that's my assumption) then whenever your suspension moves the distance between the steel tubes is going to change. Seem like it could be hard to mount other robot pieces on a dive base that keeps changing size.

One module is slotted, the length of the slot will detemin how far it can move. The distance is not far.


I can see why you might use the helical gears just to save space in the chassis but it would seem like the price wouldn't justify the cost. Although if you had some of the old helical gears from 2004 and previous season lying around I would definitively see the benefit.

We have some helical gears from 2004 but if the cost is too high we may have to change the set up. It would be nice to keep the space though.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Dowjonesbotics

we used a drive train like that in class once

And what was your experience with it?

[RossK]

Originally Posted by joeweber

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i like this design a lot. Its very intuitive.