Anatomy and vocabulary of a steering robot Pro Preview

Steering wheels and steering motors

The front wheels which the medium motor steers left or right are called steering wheels. In cars drivers use the steering wheel to steer the wheels.

There are no human drivers in robots which is why the latter should steer the wheels. The motor which steers the steering wheels is called a steering motor.

The steering wheels in our robots are not moved by a motor. The steering wheels move freely and the power comes from the rear wheels.

In "4 х 4" vehicles all four wheels are driven by the motor. Nevertheless, we will not focus on such type of constructions in this course.

Drive wheels and drive motors

Rear wheels which cannot turn and move only forward and backward are called drive wheels. The force which moves the car forward or backward is applied to these exact wheels.

Usually, the drive wheels are connected to one or two large motors which we will call drive motors.

The application is what matters

We have already mentioned that medium motors are steering motors and that large motors are drive motors. Here we have to point out that we will call the motors differently depending on the task they have to perform and not on their size.

A medium motor could be a drive motor if you build your robot that way and a large motor could be a steering motor. It is important to know how you will use the motors when you give them names.