Crazy Drive Train Ideas

[Bjenks548]

A few members of our team are working on crazy drive train ideas. While we have plenty to work with currently, I hope to get through them and onto more. If you have any weird drive train ideas please post them here and do your best to describe them. I don’t want anything that’s already been seen around such as nona-drive and kiwi, I want brand new ideas. We plan to CAD and build all these drive trains using the kit of parts c-channel this summer. Please post any ideas, thanks.

[,4lex S.]

BALL DRIVE!!!

One large ball with a traction wheeled motor rolling said ball in the y direction, and another in the x. I can't see this ever being practical, but it would be fun to build and program.

[Chris is me]

I have a really crazy drivetrain idea. Instead of 4 wheels, put 6 wheels on a robot, and make the center one lower! That way, robots will have a shorter wheelbase for turning but high traction all around!

Of course I'm kidding, but I've always wondered why people take the "let's do something weird for the sake of it" approach to prototyping, rather than engineering a drivetrain that tackles a design aspect differently. I think you should totally build a crazy drivetran, don't get me wrong - but maybe it would be a better exercise to figure out what current drivetrains you use don't do very well, and then figuring out a new drivetrain optimized toward different design criteria than the bog standard.

The latest innovative drivetrain in FIRST (nonadrive) probably wasn't thought of by going "hey dude, what if we did THAT?". I imagine they specifically looked at a way to accomplish something not present in a 6wd (strafing) without some of the drawbacks of drivetrains designed for that (swerve, mecanum). Maybe you can do the same thing - and come up with something incredibly crazy, but useful too!

[BrendanB]

Well, since Winnovation stole an idea I had in 2007 of 6 wheel crab drive I guess 8 wheel crab drive is the next new thing of the future!

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

The latest innovative drivetrain in FIRST (nonadrive) probably wasn't thought of by going "hey dude, what if we did THAT?".!

I don't know, but that sounds perfectly plausible to me. Some of the best ideas on my team have come from people just talking about hypothetical ideas or things that would be cool, and then someone sees the implementation in their head, and it just takes off.

- Sunny

[dodar]

i think it would be cool to see a crab-drive tankdrive robot

[Arefin Bari]

Here is a link to the ball drive Team 45 came up with back in 2003. Also, search for ball drive under CD-Media to see more pictures.

Team 179 and 1345 collaborated in 2009 and built a crab drive. The crab drive also drove like a tank drive. Is this what you meant?

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by dodar

i think it would be cool to see a crab-drive tankdrive robot

I believe team 2342 Team Pheonix from Nashua/Merrimack New Hampshire did a design in 2009. It was a standard crab drive robot but with added code allowing to act as a crab, tank, and ackerman steering and even some slight combined variations.

Is that sort of what you were thinking of?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I believe team 2342 Team Pheonix from Nashua/Merrimack New Hampshire did a design in 2009. It was a standard crab drive robot but with added code allowing to act as a crab, tank, and ackerman steering and even some slight combined variations.

Tons of crab drives do that. Not to take anything away from the 5 or 6 teams each year that tell me their drivetrain is a crab drive AND a tank drive, but that's pretty standard.

I think he meant swerving tank treads or something.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Tons of crab drives do that. Not to take anything away from the 5 or 6 teams each year that tell me their drivetrain is a crab drive AND a tank drive, but that's pretty standard.

I think he meant swerving tank treads or something.

Yah I was confused as well thinking of the same thing, "aren't all crabs tank drives?"

I think it is just one of many things that makes me crack up back on pit scouting or alliance strategy. "Our robot has a very low center of gravity!" That is great, but how does that large heavy steel arm play into that?

[mwtidd]

4 wheel crab with actuator legs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMmJtw0XYzk)

lets make the legs 3-position pneumatics.

and while we're at it, figure out some way to mount the bumper is its '10 legal.

or the beautiful rotating mecanums would be nice
i have a design that could be driven by one set of motors and still be holonomic

[Hawiian Cadder]

Hoover-craft....

i would actually like to see a robot with a bike drive train, even the most basic bicycles have at least a couple different gear ratios, and there are some bikes with upwards of 24.

[jamie_1930]

I think I have exactly what you are thinking of this was one of our programmer's, dana, idea in 2009. He called it serpentine drive and was designed to slide across the regolith, similarly to a snake. I hope I can explain this well enough for some people to get, and I'll try and follow it up with some of dana's prototyping of the drivetrain. You make multiple wheel assemblies that would include two wheels, parallel to one another and unpowered, with a center pivot in the middle of the two. Now you would have the center pivot offset from the center of a gear, then put a series of this in a line with eachother, connected with springs to the front and back of each and idler gears inbetween to maintain direction. Each of the assemblies would then be offset slightly so that when the whole thing was powered by a single motor the wheel assemblies would travel in a wave.

[Hawiian Cadder]

i just came up with another one, make a robot that is entirely encased in a hollow sphere with omni wheels on every corner facing outward, to drive the main part of the robot drives the inside of the sphere, if we ever get a water competition this would be highly helpful i think.

[Aren_Hill]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Well, since Winnovation stole an idea I had in 2007 of 6 wheel crab drive I guess 8 wheel crab drive is the next new thing of the future!

The Idea has been lurking around in my head for longer than that, Dillon just made it feasible by making tiny modules