Wheels

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Revision as of 18:48, 10 November 2016 by Blakemw (talk | contribs) (Added practical usage notes about friction control)
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Wheels are used for making a ground vehicle move, most notably rovers. They require Electric charge to function.

Each wheel has a top speed that its motors can produce. Beyond this there is a maximum, or breakdown, speed at which the wheel will break. Broken wheels can be repaired by a level 3 Engineer. Breakdown speed is separate from the impact tolerance that all parts have. Exceeding impact tolerance completely destroys the part with no way to repair it.

Update 1.1 introduced Unity5 which substantially improved the performance of motorized wheels. Wheel failure is now dependent on impact and other stresses. The amount of stress on the wheel can be monitored by right-clicking on it. Once the wheel stress exceeds 100.0 failure is expected. The user has the ability to select whether steering and/or the motor is enabled or disabled as in previous versions. The suspension can be toggled between enabled or disabled (fixed) in the right-click menu as well.

Wheels also feature traction control and friction control. By default these options are set to Auto with a traction control value of 1.0. The traction control value can be tailored to individual vehicles to prevent wheelspin in different conditions. Traction control can be overridden and a manual limit to the motor output set. Friction control can be overridden and adjusted on a scale from 0.1-5.0. Friction control determines the responsiveness of the wheels with the ground. Low values will have a lot of slip, so the vehicle will slide or drift. High values will have better traction but may make the vehicle more susceptible to rolling over.

Tweaking wheel settings to improve Vehicle Stability

  • Divide the wheels into steering-enabled (traditionally front) and steering-disabled (traditionally rear).
  • Use low friction control on the steering wheels, this will allow them to slip instead of attempting to oversteer the vehicle.
  • Use high friction control on non-steering wheels, this will cause the vehicle to want to go in a straight line and resist changing direction.

This scheme will improve stability when driving at high speed on flat ground. Beware that it will not help much on uneven terrain.

List of wheels

Image Part Radial size Cost
(Funds)
Mass
(t)
Max. Temp.
(K)
Tolerance
(m/s)
Tolerance
(g)
Electricity
(⚡/s)
Max. Motor Speed
(m/s)
Brake Torque
(kNm)
RoveMax Model S2.png
RoveMax Model S2 Radial mounted 300 0.05 1 200 20 20 1.0 12 0.34
RoveMax Model M1.png
RoveMax Model M1 Radial mounted 450 0.075 1 200 50 50 2.5 34 2
Ruggedized rover wheel.png
TR-2L Ruggedized Vehicular Wheel Radial mounted 760 0.105 1 200 100 80 3.5 58 3
RoveMax Model XL3.png
RoveMax Model XL3 Radial mounted 1 200 1.25 1 200 150 200 5.0 15.5 30