IRL Flinch

What was I working on?

Oh, right, it's summer, the most productive build season by far. No more excuses: Quals are done, I didn't fail out of MIT, and it's time to get back on track with the current list of open and pending projects:

1. Flinch, a miniature Mecanum-drive robot, the subject of this post.
2. Adapting the 3ph v3.1 controller for sensorless field-oriented control. Mostly a software project.
3. A new brushless controller with a lot more power and several new tricks I've been meaning to try. The first iteration is almost ready for circuit boards. Look for a post on this shortly. Hint: It's called DirectDrive.
4. The newest vehicle from the Edgerton Center Summer Engineering Workshop (of DIY Segway, Cap Kart, and BWD Scooter fame). This one is very cool. Hint: We're back to four wheels.

But first, Flinch. Here's a reminder of where this one is going:

Like Twitch, Flinch is an omni-directional, or "holonomic", robot. It doesn't have Twitch's fancy linkage steering, though. Instead it uses Mecanum wheels to accomplish 4I3O omni-directional control. I suspect it will take a good amount of software help to make the tiny Mecanum wheels effective at the kinds of speeds I hope to achieve with Flinch (~10fps), but for now I'm focusing on getting the mechanics and temporary electrical system in place.

The first order of business was to produce the motor mounts. I made all four at once from a piece of 1" wide aluminum stock, cutting them down to size later:

Under normal circumstances, 16 blind-tapped 4-40 mounting holes would be an annoyance, but compared to Quals, it was a relative pleasure.

Next, I made an insta-chassis with top, bottom, and side plates:

The top and bottom plates are laser-cut UHMW from Big Blue Saw. (I guess in this case it's more like Big Infrared Saw since it was probably cut with a CO2 laser...) I've never worked with UHMW before, but it seems to be a nice, cheap alternative for robots that don't quite justify an aluminum plate chassis. To make up for the bendiness of the plastic top and bottom, I ditched the standoffs in the original CAD model for solid 1/4" side plates.

I did put the standoffs to good use, though: From the side plates, a standoff sticks into a bearing I added to the outside of each Mecanum wheel, acting as a dead axle. It provides a bit of extra support to the wheel, even though the structural loop around the chassis is not as stiff as it would be with aluminum top and bottom plates. After dropping it a few times (on purpose), I found that the bearings would just pop out, so I added some washers to hold them in place:

I'm missing some M3 screws required to mount the motors, which is preventing final assembly for now, but here's what it looks like all together:

There's something wrong with this picture. If you can spot it, you win a cookie.

After I get the motors mounted, I may borrow the electronics package from mini4WDbot to do some initial testing. I don't expect very good open-loop performance, especially at high speeds, but you never know. I might be pleasantly surprised by the handling. And even if not, it's a good way to make sure all the motors work and the wheels do roughly what Mecanum wheels are supposed to do.