Dumb question, kind of unrelated: In the process of building a remote controlled cart to haul small heavy loads offroad. Have no experience in engineering or robotics. Where could one go to learn what's needed, say, starting at the motor/drivetrain? (ex: what kind of motor to use, exterior or interior gearing, how to calculate motor size/voltage/gearing needed to haul X weight up Y gradient, steering geometry, actuators for remote steering, etc)
Related:<p><i>JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17676730">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17676730</a> - Aug 2018 (67 comments)
Interesting that they went with the top-mounted differential version rather than the central gearbox version. I'm guessing it's cheaper. The rockers are also a lot more angular than the real mars rovers to save on needing to bend struts. Very interesting trade-offs to make this buildable with off-the-shelf parts, but I personally like the 3D printable iterations of the same concept ex. [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90HxqwZaWRA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90HxqwZaWRA</a>
Nice, I contributed to the software for this a while back. Wanted to really get into building my own robot by following the linked resource. Covid happened. Maybe someday.<p>Anyone here built it?
The licencing isn't as clear as I'd like. LICENSE.txt says it's Apache 2.0 but DISCLAIMER.txt says you need explocit permission to do anything commercial.