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!
522, also at Rochester, used a 17-lb flywheel running at 4 000 rev/min to keep them pointing straight. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness, however.
That’s sort of the opposite of what you’re describing.
Team 1388 in San Diego had a large flywheel on a gimbal. They seemed to turn very effectively with their gyro. Maybe they’ll post more details???
I know 1388’s gyro weighed about 11 or 12 pounds and was maybe 12 or 14 inches in diameter. It spun at about 2000 rpm. They demonstrated it for me while sitting on their cart, and it was able to jerk the cart left and right considerably. I’d definitely say it had some considerable effect.
Elgin, I believe the original post is talking about a mechanical gyro. I think you are talking about the electrical gyro sensor.
Yep… I was thinking the KOP Gyro sensor, & not a home-made one. Oops! :o
we tried to have “gyroscopic steering” but then it was giving us problems so we decided to fix it in one place and use it as a flywheel and it helped us a lot
1388’s gyro won a well-deserved technical award and definitely gave their machine an edge on the field.
http://ComePhotograph.Us/First/2009/522/Robot2009_ 20090306-111918-_MG_8882_25perc.jpg
Yep, saw that one. Nice and straight- but not for steering.
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.
+$0.02
-Nick
at first we had a custom made flywheel, but it was too heavy, then we pocket our more of it and it was still too heavy until we pocket out more and put holes on it until it weighted 4lbs 9oz power by a cim at full speed and it worked pretty well.
More info on 1388’s gyro: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74250
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.
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/product_info.php?products_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?
GCE…
I think I posted this link before on theory of operation…
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4560708/Turner-Theory-of-Force-Precessed-Gyroscopic-Propulsion-Systems-8pp
yeah those numbers are just about right 
our gyro actually did have a considerable effect on driving the robot, when being chased by another bot we were able to literally flip a 180 degree turn and then keep driving backwards with ease, it really did help a ton with defensive driving. demonstrating that thing in the pits was fun, it’s so loud that every time you turn it on it get’s quite a bit of attention 
too bad the motor that tilts it broke right before the last match in the finals at San Diego, with it our alliance would have had a greater chance at winning… (that was the closest our team has gotten to winning in our 6 years so i’m still stoked at how well we did.)
I would love to see some photos of it- perhaps even a video when/if you get it repaired.
We took a physics bicycle wheel demo and, calculating it’s mass (heavily weighted welded iron) we estimated that at 3000 RPM we would exceed the tractive force of the wheels by 10x.
That roughly worked out to be able to flip the robot around in turning - in fact, it would flip around up to three robots. Of course ‘spinning’ the wheels to reduce friction would make it easier.
Sadly it was never built or further conceptualized. It may never be. But I still would love to see yours.
-For those that are asking or mention mems gyros, I’m talking about gyroscopic precession. I want the gyro to turn the robot- not to measure the turn. That means huge, massive spinning disks…
we are using our turret as a gyro and it works quite well.
Thanks! That makes so much more sense. Not being a participant in the game I guess I’m not as hard-core focused on improving driving power. I can see how huge gyro’s could be useful with the low friction game. You guys are awfully smart.
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.