Meet Flinch

Every year during and immediately after 2.007, I have a bit of robot nostalgia. Last year, this resulted in Twitch, Jr., a switched-mode omnidirectional robot named after Team 1565's '08 FIRST bot. Since then Twitch has had a professional HD camera mounted to it, driven a microphone stand around at the 2.007 final contest, been on something like three Japanese TV shows, and recently been to the Cambridge Mini Maker Faire. It's by far the most fun robot to drive, ever. And I've driven a lot of robots.

But now I think it's time for Twitch to have a friend:

d'awwwww

Flinch is a smaller robot, 9"x8"x2.125" and probably less than 3lbs. While Twitch uses a fairly rare linkage drive, Flinch will feature the somewhat more common Mecanum wheel solution for omnidirectional motion. Mecanum wheels have been around for a while, but were popularized by FIRST and AndyMark over the past seven years or so. You can see what exactly they do on Team 97's '08 FIRST bot. (2008 was a great year for drivetrains.)

The wheels give it the ability to defy typical 4WD robot kinematics by controllably moving sideways. Two axes of translation and one of rotation are simultaneously available, making it a true holonomic drive. (Twitch, in its most extreme configurations, only has two degrees of freedom.) What makes this possible are angled rollers on the Mecanum wheels:

Flinch will use four of these 2.125"-diameter Mecanum wheels from FingerTech. They each have six rollers angled at 45º from the drive axis. Effectively, a robot with four of these wheels, independently driven, can create force vectors at 45º angles from each wheel's contact point. By summing these vectors, the translation and rotation of the robot is determined. Or, if you know the (x,y,θ) you want, you can run them through a 4x3 matrix to recover the wheel commands. (I guess the extra degree of freedom is the burnout axis.)

Straightforward kinematics will only get you so far, though. The real difference between a mediocre Mecanum drive and a good Mecanum drive is closed-loop control. The addition of a gyro to control the rotational degree of freedom made a big difference in Twitch's driveability, and I suspect at least that much will also be required for Flinch. I left a standard mounting pattern for electronics so that I can start with an Arduino Nano Carrier (shut up) and upgrade later to a full custom solution with integrated inertial sensors, motor control, and maybe even a magnetometer for Earth-oriented control. More on that in a later post.

For now, I've mostly been focusing on the mechanical elements. For one, an obsessively detailed CAD model of the wheel. I don't think I've ever been so disoriented by reference geometry before.

And then there are the rollers. I know there is a parametric equation governing the profile of the rollers, and there seems to be some discussion as to whether it is parabolic or elliptical. I took the easy way out:

It is what it is.

Next, motors. Unfortunately, Banebots has entirely stopped making small gearboxes, apparently. Every single one is out of stock. They've also folded up the 36mm RS-380 line that Twitch utilized so well. So basically, they only sell P60 and P80's now? And even those take 10-15 business days to ship? Fuck you, BaneBots. (I'll probably still buy your shit since it's cheaper than any alternative.)

Also, I refuse to use FingerTech's 16mm gearmotor (the one for which this wheel was designed). It just looks so dinky. The FK-050 motor and the flimsy-looking shaft are not my style. Aren't there any companies still making good robot drive solutions!? Oh yes...Pololu Robotics, where I got the motor controllers for both Twitch and Segstick. They have their own line of gearmotors now, too. And they actually don't look dinky.

Metal.

Flinch will use the 9.7:1 HP model, probably running 7.4-11.1V like Twitch. This would give it a no-load speed of around 10fps, even accounting for the √2 from the Mecanum wheels, and significantly more than its own weight in available traction force. Of course, this all depends on having two things: (1) a fast and powerful ESC, which I suspect will have to be custom, and (2) very good closed-loop control to keep it stable at high speeds. If I can meet those two criteria, I think Flinch will be amazingly quick.

Flinch will also be a little more durable than Twitch. By necessity, Twitch has outboard wheels, but this puts them in a vulnerable location. They also have wimpy plastic spokes that tend to crack when Twitch hits a wall, or when other robots attack Twitch for no reason. Since the Mecnaum set is a rather large investment, Flinch will instead have enclosed wheels, and they will be doubly-supported:

The addition of a tiny 1/4"-ID, 1/2"-OD bearing is easy, since the wheel bore is already just under 1/2". And the outboard axle is the same 1" standoff used to space out the two chassis plates. Simple. Nevermind that the chassis itself, with wheel wells cut out, is probably not rigid enough to make the structural loop meaningful. At least the wheel will look like it's supported on both sides. It's probably slightly better than nothing.

The chassis plates will be waterjet-cut, so the only real fabrication required are the motor mounts and outboard axle mounts. So basically, I could have a laser-cut prototype done some time this week...

...because clearly Designing and Manufacturing a robot with interesting System Dynamics and Controls is the best way to study for quals.