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A serious robot power train — Parallax Forums

A serious robot power train

LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
edited 2010-08-31 22:56 in General Discussion
I ride a 125cc Yamaha motor scooter everyday. They are very good 4 cycle engines complete with turbo charge for more power and automatic transmission in the form of a belt drive.

What I am wondering is if anybody has ever considered using the power train (the back wheel with attached motor, exhaust, rear brake, etc. as a drive for a serious robot.

The have electric starters. Mine even came with a rf remote that not only locks the ignition, but will remotely start the scooter.

Comments

  • mctriviamctrivia Posts: 3,772
    edited 2010-08-29 11:46
    Remote starter on a scooter? That is kind of useless isn't it? If the weather is so cold you need to preheat your engine you shouldn't be driving a scooter.
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2010-08-29 13:26
    mctrivia wrote: »
    If the weather is so cold you need to preheat your engine you shouldn't be driving a scooter.

    And you call yourself a Canadian?! :smilewinkgrin: It is only too cold to ride if there is ice, and even then there are exceptions.

    Rich H
  • mctriviamctrivia Posts: 3,772
    edited 2010-08-29 14:00
    here when it drops below -10C(the time you need to plug in or preheat if your engine is not designed to run cold like the Prius, Matrix, or Vibe) there is Ice on the roads. It does not melt off again until spring so you should not be driving a motorcycle, bike, or scooter where risk of death or serious injury goes way up.
  • P!-RoP!-Ro Posts: 1,189
    edited 2010-08-29 22:09
    I want to see that for a robot, that would be cool. Take off the plates and make it break all the rules of the road. The cops won't know what to do.

    I'm just waiting for the day that happens in real life, in case you couldn't tell.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2010-08-30 06:22
    The remote starter is ABSOLUTELY USELESS and drives me crazy, but it is package with the theft alarm. Sometimes I will sit down at home and the key chain in my pocket with start the scooter out front of the building. Later I come out and find it running or worse - I am out of gas.

    It never gets cold enough here to need remote starting. It is one of those idiotic 'Asian' features. On my previous scooter I finally had the wire to the starter cut so the feature was disarmed. (I need to do that again.)
    But the point is the whole engine and drive wheel is a unit on the rear swing arm. One can remove the unit and provide a whole new frame and steering (think about a tricycle with two wheels up front). About the only minus is you have one less brake.

    One could make some sort of go cart or autonomous robot.

    About the only thing that would be hard to do is have the single wheel be front-drive. That would require getting the engine to run in reverse (it is pusher, not a puller).

    The main idea is that you might cheaply come across one to salvage if someone crunches the front end or is hit from the side and destroyed the frame and the plastic body. We see these kind of wrecks all the time in Taiwan and usually the power train remains in good working order, but their is no way to rebuild the bike (available for pennies on the dollar as your local wrecking yard).
  • Spiral_72Spiral_72 Posts: 791
    edited 2010-08-30 14:10
    a 65mph autonomous robot? Wow...... seems like TROUBLE! :)
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2010-08-30 18:55
    Loopy Byteloose wrote: »
    I ride a 125cc Yamaha motor scooter everyday. They are very good 4 cycle engines complete with turbo charge for more power and automatic transmission in the form of a belt drive.

    What I am wondering is if anybody has ever considered using the power train (the back wheel with attached motor, exhaust, rear brake, etc. as a drive for a serious robot.

    The have electric starters. Mine even came with a rf remote that not only locks the ignition, but will remotely start the scooter.


    Too bad it's not a 2-stroke,This would have made adding "reverse" a lot easier to deal with.
  • Tony B.Tony B. Posts: 356
    edited 2010-08-30 19:04
    Why not make it a reverse trike(motorcycle with two front wheels that steer like a car). You can Google "Reverse Trike to see what I am talking about.

    Tony
  • P!-RoP!-Ro Posts: 1,189
    edited 2010-08-30 19:27
    Make it do crazy jumps...
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2010-08-31 09:03
    You can get some 2-Strokes - usually 100cc or less. But the Taiwan government has encouraged not using them due to rather bad air pollution.

    I never said 65 mph! 80kph is usually tops (that's 50mph for you Americans (the rest of the world is metric)).
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,260
    edited 2010-08-31 15:39
    I saw Moto-Terminators (ba-dass autonomous motorcycles) in some Christian Bale movie last year, but I couldn't tell if it was another Matrix movie or a Terminator spin-off, they are all blurring together in the human-machine melee movie madness.
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2010-08-31 18:40
    Loopy Byteloose wrote: »
    You can get some 2-Strokes - usually 100cc or less. But the Taiwan government has encouraged not using them due to rather bad air pollution.

    I never said 65 mph! 80kph is usually tops (that's 50mph for you Americans (the rest of the world is metric)).

    I wouldn't run the 2-stroke motor on gas and 2cycle oil.This has been banned in the U.S. on new production engines because of the pollution aspect About 8 years ago.
    A far better alternative is methanol alcohol and castor bean oil (a vegetable oil). Over Gas. This combo burns super clean, And it has a very high octane rating.
    '
    Since when has Taiwan or China cared about pollution?
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2010-08-31 22:56
    Well Taiwan is not quite China (at least not yet). And they imposed air pollution control on motorcycles and scooter over 8 years ago. Before that it was hard to breath during rush hour, especially if you were sitting at a traffic light.

    I just had to get my Yamaha checked for air quality (I have to get re-certified every two years). They impose a fine of $60USD for not doing so, but the check is free.
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