Monday, March 24, 2008

4WD/steering

I've been thinking about the steering design, and it looks like it may be too complicated to get steering to powered wheels, so maybe we should start with two-wheel drive (back wheels) for now, and modify it later if we want.

Also, it's very important to find a way to un-invert our robot, in case it gets flipped. Incorporating this into the wheels/steering could save a lot of weight. If anyone has any ideas about this please share them.

Dave

1 comment:

Alex Jarkey said...

You are right when you say that it's too difficult to do the whole 4WD system at once. By the end of the holidays, all we need to accomplish is to have a platform that can move in one direction (no steering) under it's own power.

As for a self-righting mechanism, we have two main options:

1) Have wheels which extend above the top of the chassis - so that the wheels can contact the ground even when the robot is upside down. The disadvantage of this is that it means our steering will be reversed 50% of the time.

2) Design a purpose built self-righter. This would be easiest if it was incorporated into the weapons system. The best design I can think of at the moment is a forklift-like flipper on a fulcrum at the back of the robot. It could be used to both flip others and unflip itself.

Anyway, I will elaborate on both of those suggestions in their own posts later. For now, let's just stick with the rear axle and wheels, and leave our options open about drive to the front wheels.