[Dprglist] another interesting rover approach

[David Anderson]

Hi Doug,

Nifty.

A couple of things you might want to consider.

The Mars rover-style rocker-boogie is, by design, very slow.   In order 
for the forward rocker to climb over an obstacle the rover must of 
necessity first essentially come to a stop as it encounters the object, 
to force rotation around rocker rather than around the wheel.  This 
means that the design enforces a very, very slow forward motion.  It 
cannot maintain constant forward speed while climbing over obstacles, or 
dealing with rough terrain, curbs, potholes, etc.

If you are looking for a platform to compete with Scott's design or 
jBot's, you will be hopelessly outgunned as far as time is concerned.  
We'll wait all afternoon for you to complete the course.   There are 
other advantages to the rocker-boogie design, of course.  But speed is 
not one of them.  Quite the contrary.

The second design you linked to does not have this disadvantage, and can 
maintain forward speed on uneven terrain.  However it appears that the 
platform does not scrub the wheels sideways very well, particularly on 
off-road surfaces.   So while straight line travel will be more 
efficient than the Mars-rover type platform, steering in an off-road 
environment will be clumsy at best. Odometry, if that's one of the 
things you are interested in, will probably be impossible.  You may 
remember that the real Mars rover can steer it's fore and aft wheels 
towards each other, in order to pivot accurately.  But that it a much 
more complex design than those to which you've linked.  And still very slow.

Just some random thoughts.   We studied these designs pretty 
exhaustively when were were working on the 6-wheel outdoor rover. That 
platform was not developed in a vacuum.   ;>)

cheers
dpa






On 12/05/2016 12:41 PM, paradug wrote:
> Here is another interesting 3D printed rover approach. Again, watch 
> the video.
> http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1583399
> Regards,
> Doug P.
>
>
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