NXT Dog Sled Team
A design issue that I mention several times in the projects on www.nxtprograms.com is that of weight balance. To get a mobile robot to perform well, you need to get a good percentage of the total robot weight over the driven parts (powered wheels, legs, whatever), and keep weight over other parts that are just rolling or dragging to a minumum. Well, this Dog Sled Team project appears to set the record for the worst weight balance of any of my projects so far, with only about 10% of the total weight over the front legs of the dogs, which are trying to do all the work to drag the heavy sled. So how does it work? How do real dogs do it? Hmm, maybe there's a trick to it...Labels: Dog Sled, Weight Balance
posted by Dave Parker @ 11:47 AM
4 Comments:
I don't want to be too picky, but it is a sled dog team, not dog sled team.
I do love the robot, however.
Well alot of the friction is reduced going over snow and ice. I built a sled for our dogs many years back the team was a beagle(leading) a lab and wolf Hibrid and a husky. I went fairly fast and was rather dangerous as well. If a rabbit was seen soon the beagle would lead us trough the trees off trail and ended in a head on with tree or ditch. oddly the beagle and the lab were the best pullers, the husky would just go for the walk and wolf never seemed to understand why we were doing this:) great looking dogs there you made!
Cool project. The dogs have already been modified to have tails and bark. And the sled was turned into a zamboni. :-)
I would think that the robo dog would get better traction if it was built to lunge forward while wedging its feet on the ground between the dog's body and the sled.
A human pulling a rope in a tug of war would gain traction in a similar way.
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