I am considering a feather weight with 4 wheel holonomic drive. I have looked around a bit and the only omni wheels with sufficient grip seem to be only in the usa. I cant buy stuff from the usa so i really need to find some in the uk. Or even better does anyone have any for sale ?
Omniwheels have no traction whatsoever. What you'd want to use are Mecanum wheels, which provide more efficient use of power and resistance against being pushed. I'm not sure if they've been used in a robot though - you'd definitely have to keep them away from anything which spins.
Surely omni wheels like this: http://www.superdroidrobots.com/images/TD-022-002.jpg
can only slide sideways easily and mechanum wheels like this: http://ysserve.int-univ.com/Lecture/Fujisawa1/img5.gif
can allow all four wheels to point forwards and by rotating the front and back wheels in opposite directions, move sideways.
Just like this thing:
I think some robots have used mechanum wheels before like alcoholic stepfather.
I looked into this a while back. The only place you can get them is the US.
Problem with them is that you are supporting the entire weight of a featherweight on a very thin shaft ie a single roller which makes them very fragile for combat use. I got the omni drive board off robotmarket place and tested it with 3 drills and 3 blue wheels. It worked fine on a piece of wood similar to that used in a lot of arenas and yeah its not the most efficient form of movement but it works well because theres so much dust and other crap already on an arena floor.
A little known fact. We made a set of 2 omni wheels for typhoon 2 and used them during qualifying for series 7. We never made it through qualifying and I asked for the wheels (which took a good few hundred hours to make) to be taken off when we got through on a bi. Not sure what happened to them but I believe they somewhat fell to bits.
trevor uses omni wheels on the front of megga mouse.... i believe he could only get them from the US.
I dont think he can decide if they are good for his machine or not, but they are big and strong ones !
John
www.RoamingRobots.co.uk
the person to speak to about this is andy hibbard of anticide fame, hes designing a ant with these macanum wheels
I supplied these wheels to Trevor. They come from the US based Kornylak Corporation. http://www.omniwheel.comOriginally Posted by roamingrobots
Wonder if Mecanum wheels are any better?
http://www.youtube.com/user/HIBBERDAR#p ... yMeaLBVhHA
Mecanum wheels are the way forwards. Or is it sideways?
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