Team Members:
Alyssa Dixon, Dhru Patel, Jin Wu, Sagar Bhatta
Summary/Overview:
Navigation of complex terrain is crucial for robotic vehicles used in rescue and exploration. In these situations, vehicles need to be able to climb over steep ledges and into small crevices. There is a tradeoff between these two abilities depending on the diameter of the vehicle’s wheels, as large diameters can climb over obstacles while small diameters can fit into tight spaces. Our robot will contain a mechanism to increase its wheel diameter to climb edges and decrease the diameter to duck into small spaces. This effectively solves the problem and creates a more robust system for vehicles being used in rescue and exploration
For our project we successfully designed and implemented variable-radii wheels which increased radius by over 50% (5cm → 7.8cm) when installed on a robotic vehicle like that from build assignment two. An attached joystick was used to move the car, and pushing the joystick button would toggle between the small and large wheel radius configurations.
Image of final build:
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