3D printed airless wheels help ground robots bring the wounded to safety #3dThursday
Print&Live and iSCALE3D have developed Arkan, a set of 3D printed airless wheels for unmanned ground vehicles, published on designboom.
Executive Summary
Print&Live and iSCALE3D have developed Arkan, a set of 3D printed airless wheels for unmanned ground vehicles, published on designboom. The wheels are built for casualty evacuation, ammunition transport, and logistics over rough ground. Each wheel uses a lattice structure made from load-bearing elastomers and polymer composites, with a rounded tread and enclosed sidewalls that keep mud, stones, and ice from packing in.
Open Silicon & Gate-Level Hardware Inspection
From a silicon and hardware engineering viewpoint: - **Interface Neutrality:** Mitigates dependency on proprietary BSPs, empowering open toolchains to address hardware directly. - **Supply Chain Verification:** Schematics and open pinouts allow deterministic audits against silicon errata. - **Lifecycle Decoupling:** Decouples physical hardware utility from commercial vendor end-of-life obsolescence.
Impact on the Open Ecosystem
Ensures that computational autonomy remains in the hands of the architect rather than closed silicon vendors.