Mobile Robot Dynamics

Question

Hi

I want to write a service for a simulated differential drive robot with four wheels.

is it possible to write that service so that the application of torque (force) on the wheels results in moving the robot without using the statement in the update method, saying that the wheel's velocity = velocity +- deltaspeed

thanks

Answer 1

A "Differential Drive" robot in RDS refers to a two-wheeled robot that can rotate in place by spinning the wheels in opposite directions.

I think your robot will require a different kind of drive service (does your's steer by turning the front wheels?)

RDS Simulation is build on the PhysX engine from nVidia.  I am not especially familiar with it so you might get more/better info by looking into their forums.

Your best bet might be to do the torque to speed calculation yourself in your drive service.  You can get physics information for entities in the simulation that you need (like mass, gravity, speed, orientation, wheel diameter, etc) and calculate what speed a given torque would translate into and use that to rotate the wheels..

Answer 2

Thank you Gershon

I will read the nVidia physx documentation and try.