I am building a small, electrically powered vehicle that needs to autonomously drive down a straight tiled floor for a distance of 8 -12 meters in 3 seconds with a margin of error at 3 centimeters.
I wanted to use a stepper motor since it is both precise and faster than a continuous servo. But then I wondered if I should use 1 super powerful stepper motor or 4 medium stepper motors on each wheel.
Hi,
Keep in mind that in a small car unless you accelerate really slowly and the surface is perfect you are probably going to have a fair amount of slip / bounce. I tried a few things like this and found that where i thought the car would be from wheel rotations is not where it ends up. Maybe an encoder on one of the un-driven wheels just measuring ground distance would be more accurate. I don't know, just a thought. Especially if you want to get there fast. 12 meters in three seconds is a fair clip. Just getting up to speed and back again is going to be tricky enough without trying to keep your drive wheels from spinning.
Hi, thank you for the recommendation. I was looking at the AccelStepper Library to help with ramping the acceleration.
I was also debating whether to use thin, tall wheels like CD's wrapped in a balloon like this:
Or using deflated, thick, RC car tires like these