Contact Area of Tires on surface

[nadeemo88]

Homework Statement

Hello, I am currently working on a robotics project that consists of building a self-balancing robot on a rotating cylinder. I am allowed a total surface contact area of 5 cm^2, and am currently wondering how to calculate the contact area of a whell on a surface (or curved surface at that since its balancing on a cylinder).

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

I really have no idea how to do this... I was thinking about placing paint on the cylinder and then putting the robot on and seeing how much paint gets on the wheels and measuring that...

 

[Valkarie]

but I'm not sure if that would give an accurate result. Please let me know if there's a better way to calculate this.