6 DOF with 360 Roll and Pitch

Legend. Is there an update on this?

Yes there is an update and here it is.

Why is it taking so long.
So the thing you need to realise when you are creating an revolutionary step forward in a design or a concept is that you have to go back to the very principles of what made the original concept, the concept you are evolving, and you need to find out what made it work and what it not work to the new standard and then bridge that gap.

This is ALOT of work because if that gap was easy to bridge then someone would have done it by now.

Those technical short comings are the things that create the gap.

I am now filling those gaps.

Changes so far
I like the Arduino architecture but I am not sure it is the best choice of this solution. I am still playing with it. I have two professionals working on this with me. An Arduino programming engineer and an automation engineer. They both think it can be done with this architecture but we keep encountering problems and inconsistencies. So watch this space, it might change.

NOTE:This is not home goofing around people. If you want to offer advice do so I will always listen and respond with gratitude but understand that if your knowledge is thin and you act like you know it all, and know better, I will be ignoring your comment.

The Full carbon fibre construction is really expensive. I need single bias and double bias structural Carbon weave and that is not cheap. Each ring is about 5 meters in circumference there are three rings and a single layer of it is AUD$70 a meter. You can see where that ends up going.

Reinforcements
I have decided on reinforcing it with Chromoly tubing. This is about twice as strong as steel of the same density. So it approached the same physical parameters as Titanium and is so much easier to work with than Titanium. Titanium doesn't, work well and play with others. its a spoilt child of a metal. but what do you care.

Software
Also the software.... man that is THE Limiting factor. I am learning more coding skills to be able to address this. I am certain I will have to bake my own plugins for this set up. I have some coding skills but they are not sharp enough. That is improving and is progressing.

The biggest issue is the 360 degrees then reset to zero. There are micro-controller ways to deal with it but that has to work in combination with the application software.

In Conclusion
All of this is going on while I have to work on earning an income in my manufacturing business and lets just say my hands are full but I am making progress.

What is next?
I am about to put together the architecture of the motor, the driver, the controller and the RS485 protocol sender and receiver boards and the software (thank you xsimulatior) and get it to do what I need it to do.

In other words sorting out the software that xsimulator provides is next. this may be a rabbit hole so deep it may kill the project, but just like anything else major in your life, Damn the torpedoes, lets have a crack.

There will be video, no code will be posted till it works... maybe not even then because I can't see a moment when I am not working on it, I hate putting out half done stuff.

Stay tuned... this is not dead in any way... onward and upward people!

I think the software part should be quite doable even with a ARD and you could always mount a gyro to the rig for feedback to ensure it does not get 'lost'. I would also investigate an aluminium frame reinforced with DB fiberglass (compatible) - cost/strength wise - it may be suitable. Good luck.

What is ARD? I have no problem admitting I know nothing

The Gyro idea is great. We were trying to figure out a home path, ie fail safe home position and the gyro would do it.

I considered Aluminium but its strength vs weight was not as high as Chromoly. There is HUGE torque on those rings. Like ridiculous torque. Think about the amount of torque coming out of a small car at wide-open-throttle. This is due to the distance of mass out from the centre of rotation.

So all of this has to be rotated from the centre and aluminium tends to crush and sheer with those kinds of forces.

However this is good feed back and I think about it again.

Gus, your project is amazing. I think I may be able to help with your software woes too!

I've spent the last 8 months creating a workflow to create a motion simulator with large industrial robot arms (that integrates with game engines). I'm working with a local university on their robot arm (example) and rebuilt the existing workflow to allow it to work with VR headsets.

I've written the workflow to receive the game data from xsim so that it can be used to control a robot model. The software defines the working envelope for the arm (to limit it to points it can reach) and pass the xsim values into a customized motion profile for the robot (to control how it moves).
Then bam, convert those moves into robot code and off it goes!

The robot arm can be used as a game simulator with with a working payload of 500kgs and max reach of 2.8 meters. Combined with vertical movement the arm provides (or the general ability to move and tilt in 3 axis) and I think you have something pretty compelling.

As for the software woes, I treat the movement of the robot and the rotation/orientation of the arm separately.
The orientation module is separate and is based of the end point of the robot arm. My model uses 3 concentric circles to calculate orientation so with some tweaking, we could export the values for each circle to your audino to control your motors.

Best thing is, I am also based in Melbourne!

*side note: I planned on using the HTC Vive for the simulator. However, the Vive base stations are really sensitive to movement. Because my user is my frame of reference, my trackers have to be mounted at the end of the robot arm. Meaning once I move the arm, all tracking will be lost (the high speed mirrors to really really don't like movement).
All is not lost however. Oculus uses IR LED's which should be immune to movement (and I recently saw someone combine 4 of them for room tracking). I have a strong feeling you might be in the same boat as I am.

looks pretty complex design
looking forward to the updates

Definitely. There may also be some issues with the IMU's on Oculus as they are used for motion between visual updates.

Does anyone have experience using a Oculus on a motion platform?

The Project is dead ?