The transforming wheel that I made and talked about a while back- I made a robot that can use and actuate them. The wheel is smooth for going over carpet, cement, and other indoor surfaces, and can transform to spiky for crossing mulch, sand, and other outdoor surfaces. The spikes for the spiky wheel are interchangeable for different surfaces.
The wheels are transformed using a laser cut acrylic rack and pinion system, and the rest of the parts are all 3D printed.
I also used this tutorial to make an Android app to control my Arduino, which worked great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o_QVlltNgM
I remember that wheel a while ago. Good that you finished it. We definetly need a video. The picture looks promising but it’s just too less for a nice project page
**I can eventually post the CAD files if people want, **
The only problem is I’m writing a paper on this design, so I’ll need to wait till that is submitted until I post all the files. That will probably be at least a couple months from now, as I don’t know what conference I will enter.
If something changes, I’ll post the files on my website www.botsfromscratch.com and re-comment on this to notify you, but for now there’s gonna be a pretty big delay. Sorry about that, I’m sure you could reverse engineer it pretty easily though if you’re so inclined.
How about that passive elements, could you tell a bit more about them without showing too much details? My understanding is, when they snap open the will have to get locked somehow or they will just close when a load is applied to them.
And yeah, the geometry is such that the weight of the robot does not close the petals, it actually keeps them open (once they are all the way open, at least). Also you’ll notice that it’s just a simple rubber band that pulls them into place :p
Honestly mobility is a major problem in robotics. It seems to me you have a new form of mobility that is very cool and very much intrest me. Well done. I always enjoy new robots. Especially ones I have never seen before.
