Nasa are sort of the authority on robots for me considering the blast the things out into space at a million miles an hour, and land them in a spec in the nights sky and have them run around foreign worlds for years on end. Gotta respect that.
Nasa and other robots utilize a suspension system called Rocker – bogie where the wheels pivot in a specific arrangement and this allows the payload to stay stable despite large motions in their wheels.
The curiosity rover is one such robot and there are many more. Like Artemis SR (Artemis Sr – Canada.ca (asc-csa.gc.ca)). Or the 8 wheel robotic platform from SumoBoy (8 wheel robotic platform – YouTube)
My question to myself is, can I make a rocker bogie robot where my wheel pairs act as the bogie and they pivot around something that connects them? so I can reuse many of my parts but iterate my design to incorporate the new suspension arrangement. It would allow me to make my robot narrower (turn easier, look cooler) and it would allow me more ground clearance.
The answer is true, but it took a lot more design work than I care to admit. Below you can see my design so far but this design took me a month to get to the point where I felt I was happy enough to show it off. It actually involved learning some concepts in Fusion 360 like bend forming ((1) Sheet Metal Modeling In Fusion 360 – YouTube) and joints.
In the next blog article I am going to show you how I got some of these parts made in metal, right now they are on their way to me and I am excited to show you more.