Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!gumby!wupost!dbsun!meyer
From: meyer@dbsun.uucp (Don Meyer)
Subject: Re: Cheap kits/ Starter Robots
Message-ID: <1993Mar3.184514.18226@dbsun.uucp>
Organization: BioMerieux-Vitek, St. Louis Mo.
References: <C2wtK7.Hrn@mach1.wlu.ca> <1993Feb24.113439.1@uwovax.uwo.ca> <jeremi.731010266@ee.ualberta.ca>
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 18:45:14 GMT
Lines: 28

In article <jeremi.731010266@ee.ualberta.ca> jeremi@ee.ualberta.ca (William Jeremiah) writes:
>Ok,  what about this?  To make the robot roll a ball that
>totally encases it:
>
>Make the wheels on the robot permanently attach to the ball.
>Like have two wheels on the robot, bigger than the robot so 
>that the robot can spinn freely if the wheels are held stationary.
>Then make the robot quite heavy so that the motors can't generate
>enough torque to spin the robot.  Then the robot would spin
>the ball instead.
>
>So,  will this work?

Yep.  There was a toy hamster-in-a-ball made by Worlds of Wonder?
perhaps that was built like this.  No sophistication, the hamster
merely had wheels that spun when it heard a loud noise.  But if
you drove the wheels properly I guess you could get directional
control (again assuming sufficient mass of the hamster).
I'm not presenting this as a platform since it was very much a toy,
used a single motor etc.  But as proof of concept...

Don

-- 
" 'Cause you see son, it's one of my responsibilities as a parent to wean
you from life's joy and prepare you for the relentless heartache that is
adulthood." -- Earl Sinclair to Robbie
    =========================================================
