Everything has gone wrong! I've been trying to find a way to make my robot narrow enough to fit inside the Pi Wars maximum allowed robot dimensions. The problem is that the motors I planned to use along with the tracked wheel assemblies are too wide. I was planning on a belt drive mechanism so one motor could drive both tracks on one side of the robot, and the rocker bogie pivot could be the axis of the motor.
But with these motors positioned back to back there is only going to be room for the tracks within the width if I design a two stage belt system so that the belts driving the tracks are in line with the motor body.
Another idea I played with was to use 45 degree angle bevelled gears to enable me to mount the motors at 90 degrees to the pivot axis. This would enable me to mount the motors so their bodies were oriented along the length of the robot, rather than the width. I could position the motors closer together this way and get the robot to fit inside the width limit for the competition.
At this point I realised something more significant which had been staring me in the face all along. Placing two of my track assemblies one in front of the other, there is no way to fit them within the length limit for Pi Wars! There would not be enough clearance between them to prevent the front tracks snagging on the rear tracks in the rocker bogie arrangement where each track can freely pivot around it's own axis. I wondered if I could fit them offset from each other, placing the front pair closer together than the rear pair? Then the front pair could overlap with the rear pair. But this consumed too much width again. It was time to accept this was not going to work. So now I need a completely new idea!
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