[MOC] Self guided vehicles based on Faller system

[touthomme]

Hey everyone,

There have been several posts over the years about people trying to implement a Faller based system for having vehicles driving themselves through layouts. I probably read most of them in doing research for this project. I thought I would add my own implementation into the mix...

For ParLUGment's participation in the Ottawa Train Expo this spring I was challenged to build such a vehicle. The obvious choice of vehicle was one of the commuter buses in our city. After some quick prototyping I was actually quite surprised at how simple it ended up being. There were definitely a few challenges, reliability and scale being the two big ones, but in the end it worked pretty well. Reliability seems to be directly proportional to how flat the road plates are sitting.

The frame is powered by a Power Functions M motor with battery box. I'm using a belt drive (small white elastic) to transfer power to one of the rear wheels primarily for space savings (I would have rather used gears, but it added just a little too much bulk for the buses I was designing). The steering is a 6 wide basic steering system with a magnet attached to the front. The magnet 'latches' on to a wire running under the road plates.

The buses are 6 wide and are about 3/4 minifig scale. I didn't want to make them much larger, as the geometry of the road curves is not very appropriate for large vehicles.

You can see it in action in the video below. I wrote up a more detailed explanation on my website, with some notes about limitations and performance. Instructions for building the basic frame can also be found there: http://jkbrickworks....-lego-vehicles/

Thanks for reading!

J

[JopieK]

great job! I also tried it some years ago, but my steering did not went well. This seems to go very smoothly!

[Vincent Kessels]

Interesting. I had no idea that it could be so simple.

[paul_delahaye]

Very cool, so many other vehicles possibilities for lorry's as well, cars are a problem because of scale I guess

Edited May 18, 2014 by paul_delahaye

[emilstorm]

So cool! I would not have thought that would work! Sometimes the simplest solution is the best

[Faefrost]

I can't believe it is that simple. And looks like it works amazing. Well done!!!!

[dhc6twinotter]

That's pretty awesome!

[WetWired]

Awesome, I've wanted to do vehicles driving in my display without tracks and couldn't never figure anything out without custom building roads with channels in it, this is exactly what I've wanted.

[2013-lego]

Really a great job! Imagine having a big city with a lot of vehicles driving around like this. Would be pretty sweet!

[ER0L]

This looks very nice, also the vehicles with that ingenious propulsion system. However, this has been done before (as early as 2002), see http://www.brickshel...ery.cgi?f=28960 Of course it doesn't look as smooth as your version, but the principle is the same, I guess.

We did a little research, too, when conceiving our version of a propulsion system (LCS, vehicles pulled by a tread underneath the road). I guess both systems have their advantages and disadvantages - being purists to a certain extent we wanted to see if something like this can be done completely out of Lego.

[touthomme]

This looks very nice, also the vehicles with that ingenious propulsion system. However, this has been done before (as early as 2002), see http://www.brickshel...ery.cgi?f=28960 Of course it doesn't look as smooth as your version, but the principle is the same, I guess.

We did a little research, too, when conceiving our version of a propulsion system (LCS, vehicles pulled by a tread underneath the road). I guess both systems have their advantages and disadvantages - being purists to a certain extent we wanted to see if something like this can be done completely out of Lego.

Wow, what a great find! I hadn't come across that brickshelf gallery in my research. Would love to see more details on the internals of the power/motor system. So great to see that such awesome stuff was being done 'back in the day'.

J

[eiker86]

Found the youtube video today and just love it =)

I am going to use this in my car's from now on =)

[elicend]

Fantastic system, i'm going to try :)

[elicend]

One comment : on the faller system, one default is that the cars use a lot the track : don't you think it is possible to prevent this bad issue ?

[AussieJimbo]

Great job, looks like it works very well.

The buses look really nice too.

PS: On a side note, I was very impressed by the use of the Faller System that augments the massive model railway layouts at Minatur Wunderland in Hamburg. So glad I had to opportunity to visit a few months back, it's a brilliant attraction. Highly recommended.

:classic:

Edited November 11, 2014 by AussieJimbo

[CityBuilder]

So this is basically the H.O. Faller motorized vehicle system, but applied to Lego vehicles.

Very interesting!