[ODE] Differentials and such

[Amund Børsand]

"Tom De Muer" <tom.demuer at skynet.be> skreiv:
> I think I have not expressed myself very clearly :-/   What I mean is that
> after you set the torque to the wheels, your wheels will have some speed.
> That speed needs to get feeded back to the engine to determine it's new RPM.

Yes, but what if... you jump, and in the air the engine goes back to
idle. OR you suddenly downshift... i.e. engine braking and
engine/drivetrain inertia isn't fed back to the wheels again. This would
be very difficult in ODE in my opinion, as you'd only be able to feed
the torque one way per timestep... you could alternate, but I doubt it
would work very well.

What would be really great would be a differential joint! Or rather,
just some way to set the pinion input FMax and Vel (or just add torque
to it), which keeps the relationship in angle like this:
pinion=ratio*(w1+w2)/2 where w1 and w2 is the angle of the wheels (angle
can be rotational velocity instead). Does anyone know how the Amotor
finds out how much torque it needs to set the desired speed? Guess I'll
have to take a deep dive into the ODE sources, any hints and ideas are
appreciated!

-- 
Amund Børsand <amund £ offroad . no>