Bridge Balancing Device
 

I was recently thinking back to 118's awesome, innovative endgame manipulator, and had an interesting idea. 118's main innovation was that they could get on the bridge from the side and suspend themselves in space, so they didn't take up any space on the bridge (which assisted with tripling). Their "not grappling" mechanism (which was eventually ruled illegal) was just the method they came up to execute that idea.

What if they didn't have to grapple with the bridge to accomplish their aims? What if there was another way?

My idea was to instead of passively (and illegally) clamping on to the bridge's side rail, to put a plate down on the actual surface of the bridge, still approaching the bridge from the side. One of your alliance partners would then drive over the plate on the bridge. Their weight would securely hold the plate to the bridge. Then, you would lift yourself up on the plate, while still staying off to the side of the bridge.

Essentially, you would be cantilevered over the side of the bridge, balanced by the weight of your alliance partner(s). This manipulator could also be used to push down the bridge normally (instead of lifting you up, it would push the bridge down). This almost certainly couldn't be ruled illegal (at least as I read the rules), because you are reacting against the top of the bridge just like any other robot. It would greatly assist with tripling, allowing three longs to triple together, just as easily as a double.

I leave it to the rest of CD to comment on the legality and physical possibility of this strategy.

Re: Bridge Balancing Device
 

973 was also interested in hanging via this method, and it drove the design of our subframe (So we could straddle the barrier, and strafe over to the bridge).

This case was analyzed by us. The statics are just too razor thing on it for it to work reliably (or possibly at all for most teams CGs) due to the 14" rule really limiting how long that flap can be.

If we had optimized our robot by putting the CG pretty much on edge, it was far more possible, but that was extremely limiting for the rest of the robot design.

Our decision was to play wait and see (as we didn't compete until later in season) in terms of legality.

Re: Bridge Balancing Device
 

What if instead of laying the plate down and hanging of the side, you just laid the plate down behind you while you are on the bridge and have an alliance partner drive on top of it. I think this would allow you to hang off farther than you normally would be able to (especially if your wheelbase couldn't safely hang half the robot over the edge). This was something we thought of in one of our early brainstorming sessions during the season, I am not sure why we didn't pursue it further.

Re: Bridge Balancing Device
 

Teams did variations of this throughout the season. It doesn't even need to be a full plate. For instance, I remember MOE's "harpoon" (not as scary as it sounds), a rounded cylinder they'd stick under the middle robot's bumpers to keep themselves from tipping off the edge. Quite cool. We had a similar hook that could latch under the middle 'bot's bumpers for the same effect (but we mostly had the middle spot anyway).

Re: Bridge Balancing Device
 

Are you talking about something along the lines of this?

As for their results... here's their first regional. Not sure about their second.