Are these Walking Wheels Practical?
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- čas přidán 7. 06. 2024
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I've previously experimented with a number of innovate wheel designs including ball-shaped-omni-wheels, Rotaped Tracks, and various balancing robots. I came across this Pedrail concept which has lots of compliant feet around its circumference, and I wanted to see how practical it would be for climbing over objects and up steps.
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Former toy designer, current CZcams maker and general robotics, electrical and mechanical engineer, I’m a fan of doing it yourself and innovation by trial and error. My channel is where I share some of my useful and not-so-useful inventions, designs and maker advice. Iron Man is my go-to cosplay, and 3D printing can solve most issues - broken bolts, missing parts, world hunger, you name it.
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you should totally put suction cups on the feet. purely for the sound it'll make.
Comments you can hear
*Squidward walk intensifies*
Make it climb a building lol, like suction cup man! (An animated series by piemations).
@@mnatilli9161 Yeah I bet it could. Judging by James' videos, he's restricted to climbing his kitchen cupboards or a huge Perspex sheet in his backyard.
An idea that should be done by _someone_ if not James.
To be fair, a circular smooth plastic wheel would fail far more dramatically in these tests. So would a standard robot leg. Try it with some form of friction pad and see if it makes it better or worse!
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
Yeah, I'm not sure I really understood his reasoning there.
Probably could make the shafts and the feet spring loaded instead of that contraption inside the wheel, and it would work as well or better. Specially in regards to getting tangled.
@@startedtech 9:20 is the 'reasoning' for not using any grip on the feet. In other terms, it's more than likely just laziness, as this is a preliminary test of the concept that'll never be touched again; a common theme among these conceptual drive schemes that could actually work better if they were refined, but they aren't refined due to no further work being put into them. The dog project is basically the only thing that gets consistent refinement here. I understand not wanting to develop an impractical concept, because there'll be little return on investment, if any at all, but even just using grip tape on the feet would've proven that grippy feet are an improvement. Or even a TPU band that's secured to the ends of each foot, to act like a deformable tire, would've further shown that the concept has potential if even the most minimal effort is put into it. Ironic how the walking robot with front wheels, something that can climb stairs with just its normal legs, a project that's even more impractical than this, had more initial development put into it; picking favorites, perhaps. This lack of development, and potential lack of effort as a precursor to lack of development, has been one of my long-standing complaints about this channel. Such as the dog project, for example, V1 could've had simple improvements to add compliance to it's design, V2 could've had simple improvements to its overall design to make it more robust and more functional, both would've been practical and relatively simple to develop, similar with the omnidirectional robot series and numerous other series, but we didn't see that kind of improvement; instead we see long stints into a single development at a time that is making this dog like every other popular robotic dog in design similarities, which I believe it had been stated in the past that James didn't want this dog turning into a copycat, yet it's essentially becoming that at this point. Honestly, it's aggravating at the very least, especially when there's ideas widely recommended in the comments that get blatantly ignored due to ego and arrogance, and sometimes that arrogance even comes out in replies from James. It's even more ironic when this arrogance comes out against people who actually study and do robotics as a career, legitimate suggestions get shot down pretty quick even though the person suggesting them has more knowledge of the topic at hand; it's literally becoming armchair roboticist mentality just because he's a content creator with a 3D printer and some basic kit to run robots with.
Yeah I thought that was kind of odd as well lol. I think the benefit of this wheel type is that it directs force straight down on an object that it transverses (hints why it was designed for stairs). So when the wheels slip because of no traction, it loses control and starts knocking stuff around. Hitting objects with the wrong parts of the feet and at the wrong angle.
I would think the whole point would be to make sure the grip wasn’t compromised - like bipedal locomotion that this imitates in a way.
Not saying this invention is practical or useful in any way, but the true form and function of this device was not preserved in this build.
You need a concave instead of the flat part in the guide wheel to make the 3 feet contacting the ground equally supportive.
Maybe the guide (= "camshaft" ?) should be lower too, because if you look at 11:54 for example, we can see that the bottom legs are NOT touching the camshaft but are pushed away by the white part holding the camshaft, so it it still following the circular shape
I noticed the same thing.
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.htmlr
Yes, the feet sliders are rotating, which means the height of the bearing in the guide above ground changes with the angle, you need to compensate for that to make multiple feet flat contact on the ground
Concave like the arch of a human foot? Just to be clear. Hmmm... Also the stairs couldn't be tall human stairs but like small cat or tiny hamster stairs.
It would be interesting to see a fractal vise type of mechanism so it forms to the surface.
Wow, and I thought this was cyberpunk! :)
That would be so awesome! (with the concave instead of flat of course;) )
@@saintcyberchaos265 Definitely concave! Though that's going to be a packed wheel, lol. It would be nice to see just for the sake of it.
I'm picturing all those curved ..."fingers"(?) moving and walking along. That would be amazing.
@@Scott_C Yes, hopefully it would move as I picture it. Well heck, even the vice itself looks mesmerizing to me.
As much as I love this, I can’t help thinking that this is one man’s quest to make one moving part into as many as possible
They call that engineering ;)
A regular person says if it ain't broke don't fix it, an engineer says if it ain't broke it doesn't have enough features yet :)
He had me at "practical".
crazy how this guy sees something, creates it and even criticizes it in like 10 minute video ...i bet some would make a series out of this
He's insanely clever
@@Matty.Hill_87 for real, this guy is off the charts, I'd love to meet him.
"I couldnt find any examples so i built one" ~ James Bruton everyone! The legend
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
@@Hitycooking go away
It might be worthwhile to try wrapping an elastic material around the outer parts of the feet, just to see if it handles loose 'terrain' better than just the feet by themselves. Kind of like combining tracks with feet, but maybe the best (or worst?) of both worlds. I'd also like to see a 4 'wheel' version of it, just to see how it performs without the caster dragging things around. Love the series so far. :)
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
Them: We don't want to reinvent the wheel.
James: Hold my beer.
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html5
You, sir, make being an insomniac in America, worthwhile! I get awesome content in the middle of the night!
East Coast, representing.
lol same!
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html5
Technically, this is "just" a solid tyre design. The fixed hub in the center even looks like the volume of compressed air spinning inside an air tyre.
Yes, I was sat at the end of this video thinking, what if you put a rubber track right around the outside of all the feet...
It's fun to see the centrifugal force at 4:20
Centripetal*
@@iangabriel5536 *people know what they meant
@@iangabriel5536 Centrifugal is just fine, actually.
It depends on whether your coordinate system is co-rotating. The red legs co-rotate, so in "their" reference frame they experience centrifugal force.
In the clip you can even argue that it is the *lack of* a centripetal force that makes the legs fly outward at some point. In that sense you "see" the effect of the centrifugal force.
@@landsgevaer Well, "Centrifugal" force is a term you can use to call it that, its just important to remember that Centrifugal is a fictitious force (In such that it does not exist in all frames of reference).
But there are frames of reference in which an apparent Centrifugal force does exist so you can still call it that as long are you recognize that its not a true universal force that exists in all frames of reference.
@@eragon78 I agree 100%.
Similarly, the coriolis force is fictitious, or the Euler force, and even gravity is fictitious, to name a few. Nevertheless, they all feel just as real.
At the same time, the centripetal force is never a proper separate force. It is always some other force that receives the label "centripetal", that acts as such. Like a gravitational force acting as the centripetal force on Earth in its orbit around the sun, or a tension force when swinging a stone around tied to a rope.
Hence my desire to emancipate the centrifugal force again in the above thread where it was deemed a mistake. ;)
It’s funny I was just thinking “Man I wish there was a new video on CZcams I can watch”
I suggest you to wish to win the lottery next time.
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
Presently this is my favorite CZcams channel! I love the execution on all of your projects, and all the wacky ideas you test out!
Wait for him to dig back into his Open Dog v3 soon. It's going to be awesome.
Very cool! The guide automatically reacted to the grade of the climb a LOT better than I expected it to.
If there were any tests with no guide installed at all, I wonder if it’d still manage to climb at least small obstacles.
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
Love this thing, great work! Also, the wheel looks like a happy face with cheering arms going in and out like “wooooh, I’m moving!”
Absolutely loved watching this thing move. Don’t write it off as a design. I feel like you’re getting towards something that could be incorporated as a wheelchair mechanism. Most of the obstacles encountered by adaptive devices don’t slip around so much.
It good to try new things even if it fails. In the end we all learn from it! Thanks for doing this!
This is similar to whegs i have seen in research, a wheg is a star shape that morphs down into a wheel for rolling and back in the star for rough terrain or stairs.
Since the legs are "shorter" when in contact with the ground, I wonder if some kind compressible material like foam or rubber between the legs will help. It could contour to corners when climbing the wood stacks, and make it more difficult for things like the hose pipe to catch between feet.
You mean a bit like tank tracks?
This experimental robot is my favorite series of yours! So many cool ideas that open my mind
This thing was crazy! Exactly what I love about this channel. 😁
czcams.com/video/Lov1sdU7Lyoi/video.html4
This looks very similar to the VsKfz 617, which used a similar system as the heavy pads weren’t easily damaged by mines.
It looks to me like that's just giant tracks with a cog wheel inside. Very interesting machine though!
Makes you realise why the pneumatic tyre is so good. You basically end up with a superior version of this design in function. Great video.
Awesome. Hugely impressive as always.
I note in the original drawing the flat part of the cam is actually concave to counter the variation in length as the wheel turns when the surface is flat, but when at an angle (as drawn) the wide "anchor" flukes of the centre mounting part changes the profile.
Extremely interesting! I just recently made an article about other alternatives to caterpillar tracks for armored machines that existed in First World War era, and pedrail is one of the obvious. Thank you for making this little machine, it helped a lot to understood specifics.
I like seeing you experiment with all the different forms of locomotion... So cool!
I love these bizarre concept builds. It looks like the biggest issue with this mechanism is slippage. I think you're right that some rubber on the feet could help but would also be curious if hemispherical (and rubber) feet would work better.
Interesting build from concept to design. I am amazed how quickly you can churn out these cool videos... do share how you allocate time... Respect!!!
This is such a cool mechanism. You could even integrate a small amount of suspension within each leg to give it some compliance over uneven surfaces.
That is a nightmare of parts for a very cute and novel outcome. Bravo!
Gratulation for 1 Million subscribers!
Very cool experiment James. highly enjoyed seeing this one in action.
congrats on 1 mill!
That clickclackclickclack sound of the legsgoing in and out is so relaxing
EXCELLENT INFORMATION...THANK YOU
That is really cool. Nice discovery/build.
Really struggling with lockdown here in Australia
Your contents keeping me going
So thankyou
The Pedrail wheel design was developed for heavy objects on soft surfaces in the early 20th century. A good example of the design is in a picture of a Big Bertha howitzer during World War 1. Low pressure balloon tires would achieve the same thing and be more efficient (and quieter).
Congrats on 1 million.
fascinating stuff, i think there's loads to learn from projects like this even if the actual thing seems silly :)
I have been quite behind on youtube. Absolutely amazing
Interesting and crazy and novel as well as entertaining at the same time. Well done.
You Sir, are the king of mechatronics. Awesome....
Wow that works far better at climbing over things than I expected. I was going to suggest a two wheel self balancing robot with these wheels, but then I realized that would keep the flat part of the guide from adjusting to slopes. It does look like the slides are shorter than in the diagram you showed from Wikipedia.
I had to make a stair-climbing robot for my a-level very long and not tall stairs, but I used cam snail-shaped wheels which worked fairly and very reliably
Congrats on 1 mil man
Love your content and immediately click to watch anytime it shows up in my feed
Thanks! Such an interesting concept, and you really have to make one and drive it around for a while before you can see if it is practical or not. This was one of those things which might have been absolutely brilliant, or insanely over-complicated and marginally effective.
Very clever James as usual tks for sharing
Awesome video! Love your work
I like that it resembles the massive anti mine vehicle. Very cool exploration. 👍👍
i love the soft "click click click" noise it makes as it walks
Hope someday you create a museum with all this prototypes!
put a grippy, cloth-like surface between the front of one foot and back of another with slack to allow the feet to tilt to stop things getting caught up in it and stop slipping.
Congratulations 🎊🎊 for 1 million.. 🎉🎉
hello from India... thank you for sharing this wonderful video and motivate us with your creativity.
the feet should be weighed down slightly more toward the back so that they have a "heal to toe" motion while placing the foot down. Should help with gaining purcahse on obsticals, especially if the feet were rubber soled
thanks for bringing the Ad so neutrally and not hype people into losing their money
There are rules for that sort of thing
Think a wheel with some compliant rubber 'blades' extending out across the tread would be pretty similar and much simpler mechanically. Interesting concept anyway.
Nice! Reminds me of the robot I designed for my senior project in high school, I tried to make a spherical robot with panels in the pattern of a soccer ball (so a rounded truncated icosahedron), where each panel would be powered and connected to a microcontroller telling it how to drive. I got the design more or less done, and a small demo printed out with only one functional panel, as well as a fully functional simulation in Unity. However, it ended up being unattainable due to cost and time, if not completely impractical. It was a fun and educational experiment though!
Sounds similar in design to the MorpHex robot czcams.com/video/yn3FWb-vQQ4/video.html
Similar indeed! The mechanical design was completely different, but the style of locomotion when rolling by using the panels is pretty much the same. This is super cool, thanks for sharing
There's something very charming about this robot!
What an awesome experiment! I've got some ideas that I think may help improve it.
1) Up to 3 bearings can touch the bottom of the hub at a time. The outer 2 of those spokes won't support the hub on flat surfaces since they're angled and have less height. Making the bottom of the hub slightly concave should give better traction on flat surfaces.
2) If you pause at 9:13 you can see that the center and right of the bottom of the hub isn't touching any spokes. The weight appears to be fully on the spoke with it's foot on the top of the yellow platform.
I think both of these issues can be solved by...
3) I think you'd get better weight transfer and control if each leg was sprung/compressible so they always pressed against the hub -OR- if the hub were a track that fit over the bearings, captivating them, so they're always in contact.
4) I believe forming the hub in the shape of something like a limacon** would give better traction on flat, as well as better transitions to/from steps and slopes.
5) Ditch the feet entirely. Any sort of ball/round static foot should perform better.
6) I think spring-centering the hub should also help in weight transfer and transitions.
**I'm not sure of the correct term for the shape I have in my head. Bearings/legs further from bottom should have increasing leverage to rotate the bottom of the hub towards them.
I have a book about the history of tanks that included the same line art of the pedrail. Really cool to see it brought to life!
Fun mechanism. With grip and the wood being heavier or not loose it would do way better, but so would a normal wheel with rubberized spokes. Seeing a comparison of this with rubber feet and a similar sized wheel with rubber spokes sticking out would be interesting to see if there is any advantage at all.
So interesting thank you for making this👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
Nice experiment !
I would get rid of the little feet and just keep the red parts with a circular end covered in rubber. Also as Josef de Joanelli said, concave guide.
Best solution IMO would be a very flexible low pressure tyre that would deform over objects, be very grippy but wouldn’t snag on anything. Good video though. Keep it up.
This is exactly how 4-wheel rock climbers work. Use a bead lock to keep the tyre on and then lower the pressure.
The "face" those wheels make cracks me up. XD
Great videos, as always!
What about adding a piece of rubber band around the feet, so it can act as a deflated tire... but insuring that the pedlar feet are somewhat at the right angle, and will provide grip...
So nearly my battle-ball idea (which can climb steps) : Replace the pins with linear actuators. The original intent was a self-returning ball that could move by changing its shape so only as fast as its actuators. The 'battle-ball' name came from a tank design in a very old comic... Using the latest actuators and selectable feet for different terrain, you could jump as well as climb and walk, absorbing impact of falls, etc.
I've had a similar idea, but where each leg is driven which provides, kind of a cross between this and your morphing ball. Also maybe you could have some sort of articulated track joining all the feet to stop stuff getting stuck in the gaps?
I think it isnt fair - you should compare it to same radious 3d printed "normal" wheel with and without rubber on both.
Just looking on contact surface it should be better than normal wheel.
Idea for improvement - retracting legs more to make flush surface could make it less grippy (garden hose)
I know it is easier from comment section, sorry - fan of your work ;]
If you add rubber grips to the bottom of each foot like you mentioned and put a sort of guard that covers the sides at the bottom, that would obviously mostly fix the slippage issue, and should stop the issue of things like a hose getting caught.
Add that in with changing the flat side of the cam(? Not sure what to call it) to more equally distribute the load across the feet, I think you'd have a really formidable little off-road vehicle.
Pretty cool. My thoughts are to maybe use a concave foot guide to keep more feet in contact with the ground, rubberized feet for traction, and going three or four wheel drive or at least use a large, light wheel in back to take care of that dead weight of a third wheel.
Love the quirky wheels! Instead of adding rubber pads, how about wrapping it in an elastic tread? For instance some giant wide rubber bands? Also need a new cam so that 2-3 legs are supporting weight most of the time. While you could calculate this curve exactly, probably much easier to roughly generate it in CAD and fit a spline through 5-6 points.
jajajajajaj that's craasy!! love your vids man.... long time subscription... and still in
Basically, the treads on a tank work the same way, which is one of the reasons why they're so good in rough terrain.
A superior hybrid between wheels and legs *might* be showcased by the tachikoma (in anime). Instead of a wheel of legs (as you experimented with here), the design is basically a walker with wheels for feet, where you change your method of locomotion as needed. It occurs to me that your 2 legged balancer with wheels is pretty much the kind of design I'm suggesting.
Wheels like this were common on larger German howitzers, and other wheeled artillery during WW1. The wheels weren't driven, and we're mostly useful because they wouldn't sink in mud.
James was one of those dudes that skated krux trucks and could prove they where the reason he could nail heel flips!!!
I thought of this sort of thing one time as a solution to a very, very small moon rover. The wheels would essentially be wheels of retractable antennae that extend and retract to fit the terrain and grab on to the top of big rocks to climb over them.
В руках талантливого инженера 3Д принтер творит чудеса! Класс! Спасибо!
That's awesome! Cool how you just took a patent and made it without any other reference 😅
A thought. Since the feet are angled in relation to the fixed plate's flat part, the feet aren't actually flat to the ground. Or if they are they're not flat to the plate.
a spring assisted extension of the "legs" might make for a smoother ride because it would soften the impact
Pediwheels were a pre WW1 idea kicking about to try and reduce ground pressure from wheels before the rise of the tracked systems on Holt tractors and early tanks.
There are photos of artillery guns and traction engines fitted with them in the 1910-1916 era. H G Wells suggests that pediwheels would have powered his fictional LandShips in the 1904 novella of the same name.
They were tried, and has some success with soft ground, but were not designed to climb stairs ;)
Ultimately, tracks and later flotation style tyres made them obsolete
dang thats a cool robot wheel!
If you put a full set of these on a big trunk that would follow you around, you'd make a particular fandom very happy.
I want to see these wheels with fractal-esque sets of rotating pieces leading to feet, like in that vise grip that conforms to the object put in it regardless of shape
I just think that would be cool, it would be hard to make run smoothly but it would look cool
Excellent
I would like to see a version 2 on this project. This time with 4 wheel drive, semi sphere shaped rubber on the feet, and a suspension.
Just on a side note, if you had printed a normal wheel it probably wouldn't climb those loose objects, so i think it's a success.
This! Saying this test wasn't a complete success is mind boggling. It where able to climb steps and different shaped objects. A wheel without any rubber or grip would just hit the object and spin while pushing that object away. This climbs it, even without any rubber at all! There's so many fun experiments and possibilities if that where added. I mean, Boston dynamics robot uses rubber feet. If those where solid plastic, it wouldn't be able to climb a single thing!
They are very similar to 'Dreadnaught Wheels' designed by James Boydell and later improved upon by Australian Frank Bottrill for his famous 'Big Lizzie' the largest tractor of it's time capable of pulling 80 tons
I think part of the slipping problem might be because the chassis tilts when one wheel goes higher than the other, reducing the contact area on both sides. In addition to four-wheel drive, you may want to consider independent suspension for each wheel as well so they all stay upright when going over uneven terrain.
I like your Bender robot head on the shelf behind you.
The movement of each foot is straight down and straight up. This could be interesting to automate planting or another case where holes need to be pushed deeper into the ground. Going through sand or gravel may be easier as well.
There’s a description of this kind of thing in a book called Snow Crash, they’re described as being on a skate board.
Thanks!
The feet seams to reduce whats possible. A static feet with pointy tips on each side could maybe be something to try. They would run flat on the flat part and get very grippy, almost biting into the surface depending on the angle of attack.
Love the video man
The most practical real world solution for wheeled robots climbing human scale stairs is 3 small powered wheels in a vertical triangle shape that have an additional powered axel in the middle of the triangle.
Would be interesting to see if you can reduce the number of motors, You could print one up that uses one motor on the middle of the triangle axel and belt drives the 3 outer wheels until it stops when it runs in to the bottom of a step, then it would turn the center axle and climb the step automatically.
A shroud on the outside of the wheels from 270° to 90° with some tapering might stop things like a hose from binding up. A hose might still get caught on the feet but it would be cool if something simple like that could get things out from in between the feet