I've had enough of this robot, so I've just decided to take some photos and take it to bits. I don't often give up on stuff, but this has been months worth of kicking ideas about, building, rebuilding and tinkering - and it still won't work. Very frustrating.
Saw a few synchro-drive robots on tinterweb and liked the idea of building one. Bought 3 more turntables on Bricklink and started going.
Fairly quickly abandoned my original idea of 4-wheel drive, and moved to having power going to the diagonally-opposite wheels. This worked fine, and SynKrow drives in a very reliable straight line.
However, getting those wheels to turn direction without the robot slipping round has proved absolutely impossible. The turntables turn, but the robot slips and ends up pointing off the true right-angle turn I wanted. I've now tried about six different methods of turning the turntables, or positioning the wheels - the best version is in the pictures, with the wheel 'contact patches' mounted as close to the turning centre of the turntables as I could get. However, even with this setup the robot moves around rather than sitting solidly still as the 4 wheels shift orientation.
I give up. If anyone has a decent design for a synchro drive robot like this, point me in the right direction so I can put myself out of my misery...
3 comments:
Since the wheels on the inside of the turn are turning on a smaller circle, they must rotate more about their vertical axis than the outer ones. Does your design support this? If not, that might be the cause of the slippage you're observing
-- Morton
Also it occurs to me that the outer wheels must be driven faster than the inner ones.
-- Morton
I think you need suspension. You can't expect four rigidly mounted wheels to all get the same amount of traction.
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