hi, im new to this sport but i have designed a new type of movement similar in manouverability to an omni drive.

it would consist of 2 balls each in a bed of six ball transfers (2 levels 3 on each locking it in but allowing it to move) above you would have a motor attatched to a wheel driving the ball straight and in between the balls you would have another motor with its wheell driving both balls sideways, the wheels would have to be omni wheels. i believe that this would make a more durable and easier to control than a normal omni bot.

http://robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=836
please tell me if you think it will work

Interesting. What advantages do you feel this system would have?
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David C.
Team SubKor

I wonder what happens if I do this.......

well what i see in my idea as opposed to other omni drives(three wheeled straifing robots) that it wouild be easier to drive, beacuse the wheels are not in weird directions, and this would allow you to move the drive closer to the center to aid in driving and prevent costly damages to your wheels, i think .

Looks pretty robust too. I suspect that there are other advantages. Do you intend to build a prototype?
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David C.
Team SubKor

I wonder what happens if I do this.......

Your paint picture doesn't give much in the line of detail, but from what I worked out, I can't see it working. Can you give us some details on how it drives and the way each piece fits together and how they work together. Also, if your a CAD person and knows how to 3D render, post up a render of your design, 3D helps me work things out

Good to see another newcomer into the forums.

EDIT: I've just had a brainstorm session and I think i know what you mean, will just do a render for you.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

yes i think i will try to build a prototype for my first bot, but i will have to find resources and get enough cash to do so.

yes i know how to use cad. but i dont have a cad program, sorry.

i just had a thought to how i could explain it, think of the ball as a ball of a mouse where it is rotated by the x and y axis instead of the ball moving them, the ball transfers are there to hold it in place and make it roll freely.

I gathered it was based on the ball mouse principals once I started playing in cad. The only downside two that drive is you would need some custom controllers/mixing and you need 2 motors per ball drive. This will probably end up heavy and bulky.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

yeah, i thought about that, havent worked out the controller thing as of yet but if you look at my drawing you will notice it only uses 3 wheels for both balls, for straifing there isnt much point to have 2 wheels going inwards or 2 outwards, so only one motor is needed for straifing.

I may be able to help with custom controllers. When/If the time comes, drop me a line.
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David C.
Team SubKor

I wonder what happens if I do this.......

i think i know what your speaking of. its essentially one of those ball castors but the ball is friction powered, if so i suspect an undercutter would probably smash the ball and prevent it rolling, ive seen some very fancy omnis before,

alcholic stepfather comes to mind, www.buildersdb.com do a search for it and check out the wheels with built in suspension
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www.demon50s.com - Minimoto parts
http://www.youtube.com/user/HyzerGlen - Videoooozzz

There are several mechanisms for ball drives, the ones I have seen are for tables that have arrays of these ball drives, making a "table manipulator", an object can be transferred anywhere across table by the drives as well as changing the orientation of the object. These were part of a masters project (QUT, UQ can't remember). The drive used friction as previously mentioned, and utilized the shape of a sphere as a method of reduction like the great circles, like comparing the equator to the tropic of capricorn or arctic circle. The drive motor is positioned by two other motors, making it reasonably complex.

If you can make a ball drive go for it, I can imagine an invertable bot with the balls sticking out the top as well as the bottom.

For interest, they made a table that used vibration and used an array of solenoids that did ultimately the same thing as the ball drive table - albeit slower moving. So potentially you could turn one of these tables upside down and have a bot moving around by vibrating and also omni directional - but slow.
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"Limitation shows the Master."

yeah ive heard of alcoholic stepfather, its wheels are based on the mecanum wheel design. http://www.araa.asn.au/acra/acra2002/Papers/Diegel-Badve-Bright-Potgieter-Tlale.pdf

its a cool wheel and does its job, but that isnt what im trying to achieve.

interesting background info on ball drives david, thanks .

this is probably the coolest rc car i have ever seen. i found out about it a year ago.

http://www.kyosho.co.jp/web/products/militaries/gunwalker_roller/gunroller/gunroller/gunroller-e.html

look at how light it is.

if you wait long enough the bottom pic is a video of it in action.

I had an idea that is sorta similar to what that RC tank uses. I basically thought about rotating the orientation of the omniwheels like on Sidewinder another 90` as shown here: http://www.robowars.org/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=855

The idea behind it, is that to drive forward in any orientation, the robot will use all three motors at once, unlike Sidewinder which only uses two at a time. The draw back i believe is that it 'may' be harder to straife side ways. Not positive though.
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/