Hello! I’ve finally built the Ev3 Tracked Explorer Mark II, which is a tracked rover built with Lego Mindstorms and Lego Technic parts.
The Ev3 Tracked Explorer Mark II is, of course, the natural evolution of the the first rover of its family. The first version had some issues that I wished to solve with this iteration:
- first, it was not sturdy enough, given that it was supposed to climb over terrain obstacles;
- it was not equipped with spring suspensions, so even the small obstacles it could actually climb caused some loss of grip on its track;
- then, the weight of the vehicle was too much distributed on the back of the rover, so there was not enough grip on the front to climb;
- the Lego Mindstorms Ev3 IR Sensor was located on the back of the rover, so its readings where confused by the rover body itself.
Main features of the Ev3 Tracked Explorer Mark II:
- N.6 spring suspensions for each track; the original author of these spring suspensions is Pawel “Sariel” Kmiec who first published the design in his book “The Unofficial Lego Technic Builder’s Guide”;
- N.2 Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Large motors to drive the rover;
- N.1 Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Medium motor to rotate the Ev3 Ir Sensor;
- N.1 Lego Mindstorms Ev3 IR Sensor; maybe I just said that already… 🙂
- N.1 Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Gyro Sensor; this will be used to drive on a straight line, or to rotate accurately;
- N. 1048 total bricks from 80 different lots;
- Dimensions 339mm width, 236mm length, 198mm height
- Weight 1382 grams without considering the batteries.
If you wish (and please do!) to build this model, you can download the building instructions for free from this link.
Of course, the next step is to program it and to record a video! The plan is to use the Python programming language on the ev3dev firmware, so please stay tuned and rate this post if you liked it! Many thanks!
Ev3 Tracked Explorer Mark II unveiled