The sole idea of multidirectional 3D printed wheels produced and sold by two young makers for use in competition robots is certainly rich with interesting cues. Twenty year old Riccardo Ertolupi and Daniele Spreggiaro are doing just that: to kickstart their production they have founded the Vicenza Thunders start-up but they are not going at it blindly, they have the experience to support their claim that they make things “LikeNoOther”.
The team was born to compete in the RoboCup series of events. They participated in the RoboCup Jr Italia in Catania in 2011, where they came in 2nd in the soccer category, and then continued on to the RomeCup 2012, ranking 6 and finally achieving first place in the RoboCup Jr Italia 2012. Their success is also linked to the open source omnidirectional wheels they produced – which are basically wheels comprising a varying number of rollers on their edges, and are now sharing it with others, while collaborating with the Open Electronics project.
The robot they built, Thunderobot, is an omnidirectional robot designed to play soccer/football in the RoboCup competition. It uses four ThunderWheels and goes after the ball through a system of infrared light receivers. Using the omnidirectional wheels the robot can rapidly movie in any direction, obtaining different movements by combining the speed and direction of each wheel.
Because the speed and trajectory of the robot movement is the resultant of the speed vector sum of the wheels and the moment sum produced by them, the possible combinations are unlimited. All it takes is a lot of calculations, a basic knowledge of physics and the wheels, which can be purchased at prices ranging from €11.99 to €19.99, including also the Mecanum variant, with slanted rollers. Not bad for something that can do this:
