Introduction:
Our design is an omnidirectional roller which can traverse in three directions by using five rollers mounted around a sphere. The middle of the sphere is above four of the rollers to ensure that the sphere can not fall out of the frame. The rollers are the same types of wheels used from the tank tread kit, but scaled down by one half. One roller is mounted on each leg of the frame and one above the sphere to keep it from chafing with the top of the frame. The plastic apparatus has VEX sized (.182 sized holes at ½ inch intervals) holes on the top face. There are a total ten holes. Two of the legs have a hole removed closest to the intersection due to interference with the centered roller and its mount.
Explanation:
We created this device mainly for the purpose of stabilizing and the maneuverability of a robot. Last year our organization used the tank rollers as an anti-tip for an unstable robot. They only worked, but to an extent. The rollers could only go forwards and backwards, so the rollers slowed down the robot during a turn or strafe. This roller could server perfectly in that situation or even to improve an autonomous coding portion of a match. A roller mounter on the side of a robot could be used as a programmer as a safer way to push the robot back against a wall to calibrate without the risk of damage or being caught.
CAD:
To create our product we used Autodesk Fusion 360, version 2.0.3800. No one was familiar with the program due to the general use of Solidworks in our area and our access to licenses and compatibility, but those designing decided to use Fusion for this project over Inventor and TinkerCad. TinkerCad didn't seem to have the right capabilities for our project and two of our members were already familiar with Fusion. There is no video of the project in motion, due to the movement of a sphere not being apparent in an animation.
Conclusion:
Our project resulted in a product that we think would be useful to us any many other teams. The design changed multiple times to accommodate reasonable size, complexity, and ease of use restraints that we evaluated to be essential in a device that would be mass produced and used by teams with diverse building styles. Our team currently does CAD out our robot, and will likely continue to use Solidworks in this process, but using Fusion exposed us to the concept of an unfamiliar work environment.