i clearly did not invent the wheel on this one (pun intended) and there are many similar designs out there, my design was made in order to maximize 3DOF CNC and 3D printing usage and to be able to be built with the specific tools i had in my possession.
I used Solidworks in order to create the model.
This project was an attempt at making custom drive method that would offer the greatest amount of freedom for navigating in flat surfeces, as can be seen in high school robotics competitions. taking inspiration from the well known concept of Swerve Drive, I created a drivetrain capable of reaching reach any point in space in a straight line without ever needing to turn to face the direction of movement, an alternative way to phrase this unique ability is "the rotation and translation are completely independent"
this project took two months and required CAD design, prototyping, CNC cutting and assembly,
i am overall pleased with the results and especially with the combination of printed and aluminium parts. as can be seen in the videos linked below, everything works as intended.
Click here to see a video of the thing spinning around.
the coding and electronics were made by two other people while i did the engineering and manifacturing. this was all done inside the
school's robotics shop, we worked on it at night when there was no school activity.
here is another video showcasing the development steps with many images in chronological order.
we stopped working on the project when we reached the first fully working prototype.
