Longshot Gyro Drive

[xycadium]

How's the project going?

[TannerLD]

This year's project is going on. Still prototyping some drivetrains. The robot in this video is dead.

[xycadium]

Cool!

How does it know where to return to? I started to think it just counted the rotations of its wheels or something but that isn't the case since you can hold it in place and the wheels keep spinning. Do you use some kind of optics that point at the ground to find its original place or something? I'm not a robotics scientist or anything close so please forgive my most likely dumb question.

[TannerLD]

We use a more advanced version of a device called a gyroscope which is simply, a circular frame spinning at high speeds. Due to physics, the frame holds its position in all axis and dimensions (don't quote me on that). Hence, it stays straight when the robot turns either left or right, so we know how far off center we are and just correct for it. Quite neat indeed.