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

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> 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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"Le Forgeron" <jgr### [at] freelocalhost> wrote in message
news:Xns957477BB0D7DDjgrimbertmeandmyself@203.29.75.35...
>

<snip>

Uhh, thanks... actually, I'll settle for a track that vaguely follows the
path around the wheels without going via Mars...

> 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.

I'll take a look.

> Not a lot of comment, and most variable name in french...

French is fine - I'm a perl-programmer.

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Here's some interesting links you might check out:

http://octopus.ius.cs.cmu.edu/~hbb/Millibot/IEEEMillibotTrains.pdf
http://www.adams.com/solutions/machine/ATV_data_sheet.pdf
http://www.argospress.com/jbt/xref/trackvehicl.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/skid-steer1.htm

=Bob=

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See:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mops/atelier2.htm

You can get a translation from Google.

The MOPS is basically exactly what you are looking for.  It doesn't do the
'droop' at the top, but if you need you can fake that with an outside radius
wheel on the top return.

See my image in P.B.I if you want an example of what it can look like.  (my
take on a sphere and plain).

        == John ==

"Tom Melly" <pov### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote in message
news:415c1cb2$1@news.povray.org...
> "Le Forgeron" <jgr### [at] freelocalhost> wrote in message
> news:Xns957477BB0D7DDjgrimbertmeandmyself@203.29.75.35...
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> Uhh, thanks... actually, I'll settle for a track that vaguely follows the
> path around the wheels without going via Mars...
>
> > 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.
>
> I'll take a look.
>
> > Not a lot of comment, and most variable name in french...
>
> French is fine - I'm a perl-programmer.
>
>

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