Gyroscopic Steering?

[jgannon]

More info on 1388's gyro: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=74250

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by purduephotog

At the Rochester Regional there was one team with a tiny gyro that was designed to assist with steering- but it had been removed due to weight restrictions. -by Tiny I mean 6lb, maybe 10" in diameter. Mechanical Gyro, not electronic.

A search for 'gyroscopic steering' or 'gyro steering' don't turn up any useful hits- so I'm hoping someone will have a link or post to exactly that.

We're going to off-season build up our gyro using one of the old 3.5" cims - lets see how that works!

Originally Posted by computerboi1503

On the topic of Gyroscopes, we tried using one that the disc weight was near 10.5 lbs, and spun at a high rate of speed. I'm sure if Pat sees this thread he can give more accurate numbers. Anyways, we tried it, played with it all season, and it just was not effective enough, given our weight constraints. If we had a heavier disc we probably could have made it work.

Yep, you are probably talking about us. 7 lbs. steel, somewhere around 10" in diameter, attached to one of our old swerve modules from 2007 for easy rotation. It was powered by an AndyMark FP planetary at 1:1, spinning at somewhere around 3000 RPM. Rotation of the gyro assembly was done with a Globe motor.

We played with it on and off throughout the build season, trying to decide if it was worth the effort making a competition-legal assembly, before scrapping it somewhere around ship. It did have a pronounced effect on robot turning, but we deemed it not enough to be worth the extra weight, as well as the fact that it moved our centre of gravity much farther forward than we wanted. We brought the gyro assembly to FLR to display in case anyone was interested.

[CJmango]

You can accomplish something very similar with an electrical gyro, too, if you're just interested in assisted turning. You should check out the MEMS gyroscopes on sparkfun.com.

We used one in a project at IIT where we performed controld drifts with an RC car: http://mechatronics.iit.edu/index.php?n=Fall08.Group2.

The gyroscope we used was the MLX90609-E2: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...oducts_id=8336. It measures up to 300d/s across 5V.

The thing is, the gyroscope is for heading only and won't detect tilt. We coupled it with an X/Y accelerometer for complete control of the vehicle.

I guess my question would be, why spend all the weight developing a large mechanical gryo?

[TubaMorg]

GCE...

I think I posted this link before on theory of operation.....

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4560708/Tu...on-Systems-8pp

[Ozeaden]

im also part of the team that had the gyro at san diego. all i can say is that it works very well. im the driver of that robot and it helps out with all turns tha i make. i was actually very supprised that other teams didnt implement this to their robots.

for more specific details about it, the actual flywheel weighs about 10 lbs, the frame around it weighs about 5 lbs, it spins at about 2400 rpm, and to my extent of knowlege, the gyro frame turns at about 45 degrees. it mostly makes all of the robots movements more fluid and accurate. not to mention also it will get me into harder turns or get me out of sticky situations.

for example, during one of the practice matches at san diego i was going and picking up balls and i accidently missed one by accident and it was just skimming my left bumper. i turned the gyro to the position for me to go left and turned left. in about a second, i did a full 360 and i picked up the ball. the overall circular momentum from the gyro is very powerfull and a huge advantage.