Hi,

After lurking for several years and after arising of this new Mindstorms forum it's time to start sharing some of my own MOC's.

I present the Boogie Burnout:

 

This bot is based on the Rocker-Bogie suspension mechanism, which is also used for the Curiosity and Opportunity Mars rovers. The Bogie-Burnout is my own interpretation of the system and not a copy of existing robots.
My main goal was to experiment a little and see if the Rocker-Bogie system would work in the scale of my other MOC's

All 6 wheels are able to pivot up and down and turn in every direction.

The main problem I faced building a rover this scale was the flexibility of the Rocker arms in conjunction with the middle base part of the robot. Adding flexible links between the left and right wheels solved most of the flex, but turning the wheels 90 degrees still caused the robot to look like a drunken sailor. Adding removable stabilizers solved most of the wonky movements. When not driven 90 degrees side wards these links can be released on one side to give back all flexibility to the rocker system when driving over obstacles. As it turned out, a Lego Technic structure this big has enough flexibility to drive over obstacles without having to unlink the stabilizer bars.

The wheels are driven by 4 medium Power Functions , which are geared down in a ratio of 11.7 in two steps.

To prevent the current regulator kick in, each medium motor has his own IR receiver, which makes 24 receivers in total. The Power Functions remote is driven by two Mindstorms motors, one for speed control and one pressing the stop button. Controlling two channels simultaneously and thus reducing the amount of IR receivers resulted in lag and speed difference between motors.
For each two motors and receivers there is one battery box, this again to prevent the current limiter kicking in.

The outside plating of the rover can be removed easily within seconds.

Bonus:

The Bogie Burnout is high enough to drive on top of one of my older MOC's, which opens some possibility's on events :)

Video:

 

Note for the purists:

This is not a 100% pure MOC. Some 0.5mm Teflon rings are used to prevent slack in the mechanism and the Mindstorms cables are custom made to length.
Some tape is added to the wheels to prevent them from scratching.

Edited July 26, 20195 yr by vijv
Non working pics

That's an incredible machine!!! Seems to work very well. I see you have 2 solar panels which you don't talk about. Do those contribute to the power source? Or, what do they do?

Thanks :)

Those solar panels are only aesthetic and do not contribute to the power consumption, just make the bot look more like something that could survive in space.