Omni Teaches Physics
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Ever since I saw Steve Hassenplug’s “Omni” (see also in NXTLOG), I wanted to make one of my own. Last week, I finally obtained enough wheels via Bricklink to make the three “omni-wheels” needed. Working on Omni, I soon realized that controlling the three motors is actually the toughest problem with this type of robotic motion. If you want Omni to move in any one direction, you should (in general) operate all three motors in varying speeds. The videos showing Omni in action suggest that Steve controlled each motor independently using a second NXT sending BT commands to the Omni NXT brick. I wanted to use my PSP-Nx PS2 Controller Block and maneuver Omni with a wireless PS2 controller. In this post, I’ll describe how this is done and how Omni can be used to teach students something on elementary rigid body kinematics.
Posted in personal, video, projects, news | 45 Comments »