> Any suggestions as to the general approach to getting a caterpillar
> track to flow appropriately around a set of tank-wheels?
> 
> There would be 4 wheels - two larger ones at ground level, and two
> smaller ones, higher up and offset from the lower ones - e.g.:
> 
> O          O
>    O    O
> 

The path at the ground can be assumed to be just flat.
The part ahead of the movement is also flat.
The part back to the movement may be flat or not (it is not when changing 
speed: acceleration and deceleration). When not flat, catenary.
The part above should be a suitable catenary (you could introduce also a 
sinusoidale perturbation of it here, if you feel lucky, amplitude being 
larger as you are farther from a wheel).

The track cannot be too tight. But it is not so loose.
You should make the track as an integer number of segment, adjusting the 
catenary allowance for the rounding of track length.
(Difficult part is to compute the catenary length exactly)

Next, you sample the track for every segment (keep in mind that as time 
flow, the samples get an offset on the track sampling.)
Obviously, in a perfect motion, the segments on the ground do not move!

I made a track, but without catenary, for a 3 wheels system,
you can find it at irtc, 2000, july-october, sylvanus, robot.inc, at the 
end. Not a lot of comment, and most variable name in french...


-- 




l'habillement, les chaussures que le maquillage et les accessoires.

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