Conventional Steering ATR Support

Summary

This is a custom robot that we built for a customer who wanted steering similar to that of a car rather than skid steering, which we use in most of our robots. The purpose was to provide a smaller scale platform to demonstrate and develop autonomous routines destined for vehicles with "conventional steering." So we modelled a simple steering system inspired by that of a go-kart and built it on a custom-designed chassis.

The basic steering mechanism includes an IG42 motor with a custom coupling, tie-rods, and custom wheel shafts. As the motor turns, the tie-rods push/pull on the wheel shafts, forcing the wheels to turn. For control, a potentiometer is mounted to one of the wheel shafts. As the potentiometer turns, the resistance reading provides the necessary feedback needed to control the steering accurately. This robot also features chain driven wheels with the same dual bearing system featured on our DB Heavy Duty ATRs, which take all of the weight of the motor shafts and put it on the chassis. Other features include IG42 122RPM motors with encoders, a Sabertooth 2x12 motor controller, three K2 12V 9.6Ahr batteries for plenty of runtime, an Arduino Due microcontroller, an ABS upper deck for extra mounting space, and a custom bumper.