Wall-E3 – Different Form-factor for Better Turn Performance

Posted 20 October 2021

I have been struggling for years now with Wall-E2’s reluctance to turn smoothly, and I have been looking for ways to improve the situation. I have even thought of going back to the 3-wheel form-factor with two driven wheels and a 3rd caster wheel, just for the ability to make smooth angle adjustments. However, the 3-wheel layout has its own problems, like a tendency to get stuck when one or both drive wheel loses traction, and a tendency for the caster wheel axle to accumulate carpet fibers to the point where it won’t turn.

Recently I ran across a blog post called ‘4-wheeled robot design basics and challenges‘ that seemed to describe Wall-E2’s turning difficulties pretty accurately. In addition, this post went on to suggest how the 4-wheel form-factor could be modified to minimize the high side-slip friction exhibited by most 4-wheel drive robots. The author suggested that by reducing the front-back dimension and increasing the side-side dimension, the side-slip friction exhibited during turns could be minimized. The author showed (literally) that the problem with a traditional 4-wheel form factor is that the front and back wheel pairs have non-intersecting turn radii, as shown in the following animated GIF from the RonRobotics site:

Traditional 4-wheel robot form-factor exhibiting high side-slip friction during turns

If the form-factor is changed from the traditional ‘long and narrow’ style to a more ‘short and wide’ style, then the turning situation is more like the following animated GIF:

4-wheel drive form factor to minimize side-slip friction during turns

The author didn’t provide any numerical guidelines for how short and how wide, but the above animated GIF provides a pretty good idea.

I decided to see if I could use TinkerCad to model a form factor that might be more like the ‘short and wide’ form-factor. From previous work I already had most of the individual elements (wheels, motors, battery compartment, charger module, etc), so I did a ‘FrankenRobot’ copy as shown below:

traditional (left) and ‘short/wide’ form-factor (right). Orange disk represents turning circle

The orange disk shown in the above image was intended to model the turning circle. I manually adjusted the form factor until the turning circle more-or-less matched the layout in the ‘design 3’ image from the RonRobitics site.

After playing with this for a while, I came up with the following ‘final’ design for my new Wall-E3 short/wide robot:

Short-Wide Robot Version. Battery pack in green, TPS5100 charger in red, charging probe in orange

With the above form factor, there is plenty of room for the battery pack (4 x 18650 Li-ion) and the TPS51000 charging module. After arriving at the above layout, I started working fabrication details. At first I thought this was a perfect opportunity to use some Adafruit 20x20mm slotted extrusions and associated hardware I have had hanging around for years looking for a project. However, as I got into the design in TinkerCad, I realized I had a problem, as shown in the following screenshot:

Short-Wide Robot chassis using Adafruit 20x20mm slotted extrusions

The motors must be mounted either above or below the extrusion. This could be effected using the Adafruit ‘T’ plate, as shown above, but then the question becomes – “what to do about a bottom plate”? I could put in a second set of extrusions, but that would severely reduce ground clearance. I could maybe bend the bottom part of the ‘T’ plate to support a bottom plate, but bending a cast aluminum piece didn’t seem like a good idea. In addition, an even bigger problem was how to mount the top plate. The obvious solution would be to drill 4 holes in the top plate, and use the slotted channel threaded insert hardware to mount the plate. But, how does that work – the threaded insert pieces are made to slide freely in the channel until tightening the mounting screw causes them to bind to the sides of the channel – all fine and good, but that won’t work for a blind mounting arrangement; the inserts could be anywhere in (or out of) the channel – oops! I thought I might be able to find a way of fixing the inserts into place, but that didn’t seem like a good idea either. I could simply drill and tap 4 holes around the periphery of the extrusions, but then I’m using expensive extrusions just like flat plate – bummer!

Eventually I realized that a standard U-channel from McMaster Carr should do the trick. The motors can be mounted through the ‘bottom’ of the U, and the top/bottom plates can be mounted to the top/bottom of the U-channel. Much simpler, and because I can mount the motors low in the U-channel, I can maximize ground clearance – yay!

27 October 2021 Update:

The first try at McMaster-Carr U-channel wasn’t too successful – it was much thicker and heavier than I realized from the drawings, so I went back to their site and re-ordered a much lighter (and nicer) U-channel style. The following photo shows the difference.

First order on the left, second on the right

I got 2ea 24″ lengths of the lighter U-channel, and as an experiment I tried cutting 45º bevels on both pieces to see how I might form right angles for the chassis. This worked out pretty nicely. In addition, I cut a 1/2″ section from the thicker U-channel, and then cut it in half to produce 2ea right-angle brackets for use in connecting two pieces of a right-angle corner. The following photos show the results:

I was very pleased with my first try at forming a right angle corner for my new chassis – it looks like using pieces of the thicker U-channel for connecting brackets will work. I don’t think I’ll need more than two screws per corner, as I will also have top & bottom plates that will add tremendously to the overall structure rigidity. Now I just have to get the dimensions correct so that my already-cut top/bottom plates will fit, and then do all the other stuff to produce a finished ‘Wall-E3’ chassis.

02 November 2021 Update

After the usual trials and tribulations, I think I have produced a decent 200 x 230 mm chassis, as shown in the following photos:

One minor ‘gotcha’ to using the thinner sidewall U-channel is that I managed to strip the threads on a couple of the threaded holes as I was installing the top plate. Fortunately I had some 3mm press-fit nuts left over from Wall-E2 and was able to convert the threaded hole to a press-fit nut installation without too much problem. Right now I have two holes converted to press-fit, but I suspect all sixteen holes will need to be treated at some point. So, back to McMaster-Carr where I ordered another 100 press-fit nuts, along with some additional 3x6mm flathead screws.

By the way, just as a plug for McMaster-Carr: I ordered and received a 90º countersink bit so I can use flat-head screws on the chassis, but when I received it I realized the tip of the bit wouldn’t fit into my 3mm holes – bummer! So, I contacted McMaster-Carr and asked if I could return it for a refund, and (well within the 30 minute reply guarantee) I got a note back that they would refund the cost of the order, but I didn’t have to return the item – wow! I have been a loyal MC customer for decades, and they continue to impress me with their responsiveness and speedy deliveries. The next time you have a need for hardware, think of McMaster-Carr.

The next step is to add the motor drivers and motors to the prototype setup to wring out any mechanical issues there. As can be seen in the following photo, the current Wall-E2 setup has the motors mounted through the side walls equidistant from top and bottom. However, I plan to mount the motors as close as possible to the lower edge of the U-channel, so as to achieve the largest possible terrain clearance.

To facilitate this I designed and created a ‘motor mounting template’ with motor axle location holes that fits inside the sidewall U-channel, as shown below:

Wall-E3 motor mounting template

The template has two holes per motor location to allow the template to be placed either way (side tabs toward the top plate, or side tabs toward bottom plate) and still have one set of holes in the proper vertical location.

06 November 2021 Update:

As described in the companion post to this one, I assembled a basic system on a blank aluminum plate as shown in the following photo:

Basic system assembled on blank aluminum plate

After fabricating the aluminum chassis, I started transferring pieces from the prototype to the new chassis, as shown below

After transferring everything except the Teensy module and the 5V LDO regulator module, this is what the new chassis looks like:

Still lots of work, but it is now clear that everything fits comfortably into the chassis, including both motor drivers which are mounted on top of the chassis on the Wall-E2 robot. This will clear up lots of space on the top plate, so things should be a lot neater with Wall-E3.

07 November 2021 Update:

After getting the basic component layout established, I decided to see if I could get the robot to actually move forwards and backwards under computer control via the HC-05 Bluetooth link. So, I transferred all four wheels from Wall-E2 to Wall-E3, and temporarily hot-glued the Teensy 3.5 and its accompanying 5V LDO regulator/HC-05 module to the battery pack, as shown in the following photo:

And, after fixing the problem of one set of motors turning in the opposite direction as the other set, I was able to move Wall-E3 forwards and backwards utilizing the wireless link from my PC to the robot, as shown in the following short video:

The next thing I tried was some manually controlled ‘spin’ turns. To do this I added an overload to the function that does normal rate-controlled turns using an MPU6050 IMU sensor to make a turn through a defined angle span. The overloaded function simply starts a CW or CCW turn and waits for any key to stop the turn. Here’s a short video showing the result

CW & CCW ‘spin’ turns

As can be seen from the above video, Wall-E3’s turn behavior is MUCH smoother than that of Wall-E3, and is quite close to the behavior exhibited in the ‘wide’ form factor GIF that prompted the Wall-E3 redesign (repeated below for comparison):

4-wheel drive form factor to minimize side-slip friction during turns

With such good results from the above turns on hard-surface flooring, I decided to try my luck with my test carpet patch. Turns on carpet with Wall-E2 have always been a jerky procedure, with PID algorithm having to ramp motor current way up to overcome wheel side friction, and then way back down again when the wheels broke free. With Wall-E3, the turning behavior on carpet was indistinguishable from its behavior on hard flooring – both cases exhibited very smooth turning behavior around an almost constant turning axis, as shown in the following short video.

For comparison, here is Wall-E2 making a 180⁰ turn on carpet:

And here is the plot of motor speed vs time for the turn.

Average turn rate = 41.8 deg/sec

As can be seen from the above, the motor speed goes from max (255) to min (50) several times per second as the wheels alternately grip and then slide. In contrast, the Wall-E3 turns on both carpet and hard flooring were done with a constant half-speed (125) motor current, resulting in an angular rate of about 70 ⁰ /sec on both carpet and hard surface.

20 November 2021 Update:

Unfortunately, when I tried to add MPU6050 capability to Wall-E3, I went down a rabbit hole due to changes in Jeff Rowberg’s I2CDevlib library for the MPU6050 that have made it incompatible with Teensy 3.x targets (see this post for the gory details). After chasing Alice for way too long, I finally figured out that I had two choices. I could use an older (as in 2 years older) version of the i2cdevlib libraries with a Teensy, or I could use the current versions with an Arduino UNO or MEGA. Because at this point I already had an Arduino UNO running with a MPU6050 and the new libraries, I decided to continue on that track and see if I could tune the PID engine for smooth(er) turns with the new form factor. Here’s the physical setup:

Wall-E3 with Arduino UNO/MPU6050 setup running the motors

Here’s the code:

After a number of iterations, I arrived at the following PID values:

Here are the Excel plots showing the turn performance:

At this point, I think I’m pretty much done with this post. The ‘rest of the story’ will continue in the companion ‘Replacing Mega 2560 With Teensy‘ post.

Stay Tuned,

Frank

2 thoughts on “Wall-E3 – Different Form-factor for Better Turn Performance

  1. Pingback: Wall-E3 Replacing Mega 2560 With Teensy 3.5 Part VI | Paynter's Palace

  2. Pingback: WallE3 Spin Turn, Revisited | Paynter's Palace

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