I’ll admit I’m a big fan of tracked vehicles, from snowbikes, to NASA launch crawlers to military tanks.
Today’s invention is a new form of track, especially for vehicles which are subject to damage or attack.
Imagine that the tracks are replaced by a series of parallel chains. These are driven by having a sprocket wheel for each chain -so that the drive wheel might have 5-10 co-axial sprockets.
This would avoid many problems associated with loading tracked vehicles onto trains (when they often need to be equipped with narrower track ‘shoes’)…we’d simply fit only the innermost two or three chains. In addition, when damaged, replacement of one or two chains would be much simpler than the very heavy (and space-wasting) sections of normal track.
Finally, each chain would be made from hardened links whose geometry mimics the metal puzzle shown. These can be joined without the need for any pins etc (making use of the small amount of slack, which tracks always have, to slide links together).
