Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

You can see a document tracking our build season progress here. There is a climbing sequence about halfway down that shows the concept we are planning to use.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Perhaps a heavy lift quad-copter that reaches out and taps each horizontal pipe, dumps 4 blue/red discs and hovers in level 3? ;o)

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

This is an interesting concept, and has similarities to our plan.

By "3 stages" do you mean 3 parts that move, in addition to the fixed end? That is complexity that can be difficult to put into operation. Depending on how you use the pulleys to move the last stage, that could add up to a lot of torque on the first stage. Without seeing a drawing, that would be hard for us to evaluate. But it sounds good, and I hope it works for you.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Other than safety issues, if you could make that work within all the robot rules (like energy source), I think that would be perfectly legal, and a valid climb. When you're done, don't forget to post the video.:cool:

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Thanks, you guys are doing a great job!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Don't think that there isn't an easy way to do something without compromising something in a big way. Our team has developed an easy way to climb 3 lvls and have a shooter that can consistently shoot 3 points. Sunday night the weekend of the kick-off, I had an epiphany of a simple design that takes up little space and uses just 3 motors. The first week we prototyped and have been celebrating at the success since. The one thing we did decide to lose is the frisbee pick up for an unrelated reason. Just keep trying.

Might have a big issue with bumper rules during the rest of the match though. That is unless you can hover really low to the ground.

Not to mention you better latch on before the timer reaches 0 and they disable all the motors.

Though I would seriously love to see a robot try this. :P

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Color me impressed. I look forward to seeing the end result.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Pics or it didn't happen...

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Oh it happened! We just don't want to give out details just yet ;)

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

The output was directly driving an arm with an AM .5" keyed hub. the moment arm was 9 inches long. the weight was 178 pounds. The goal was to test to failure...mission accomplished!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Three motor shooter or three motor climber?

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

We have developed a one-motor three-level climber, with a secondary motor for weight distribution. Will keep you updated.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

It needs anti-gravity pumps - remember that points are assessed after robots power off!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

This.

Nothing bad ever comes from sharing a design. Someone may think of an improvement for it, or a real reason why it may be illegal.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Those darn bumpers always mess up the design! Perhaps we can just have bumpers that stay on the ground after lift-off. And you are correct, we need a clamp for the EOG power loss.

I was kidding of course (about the quad copter) ... our climber goes up the corner (we hope) using 2 CIMS configured something like a cog train. And the design effort is humbling, especially for a EE!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Our team has developed a way to score 18 in auto. Up to 42 in teleop. Climb to 30. Dump 20 in top goal. It is important to remember that you can not score in the pyramid during auto. Also you can only posses 4 disc, ever. That includes when climbing and dumping!!! I predict that at championships we will see 200-300 point matches. I also predict our robot will score 110 at best and rarely bellow 68.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

I love your confidence. Keep in mind this is a very dynamic and complex game. To say that your robot will never score below 68 points is quite a statement. Be careful where you set your goals and expectations.

Good luck

Justin

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Wow! Someone is in for a RUDE awakening! ;)

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

what seems so crazy about this? I understand 110 is pretty far fetched, not impossible, but 68 i believe will be common at championships.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

I guess we'll see in a couple of months!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

What Justin is saying is that we think we can successfully climb while also being able to shoot in autonomous. The 20 pt. dump is in the early stages of prototyping. I'm really excited by the team's enthusiasm this year, but realistically I am having many sleepless nights due to the vision of Thunderbolt falling from the pyramid. :yikes:

I will say that this is probably the most difficult game element that I have ever heard of in FIRST (well beating 71 in Zone Zeal isn't quite a game element). I also realize that our team has developed a design that I believe will climb well. We were able to keep our shooter on Thunderbolt, but at the cost of giving up floor pick up. I would like to wish every team a successful Season in 2013, and hopefully Team 3885 can compete in St. Lou twice this year. (with a little luck)

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

I've been hitting my head against a wall trying to solve this. The pyramid is one of the most difficult elements I've tried to solve in my ten years. The size constraints, combined with the zone rules, make it extremely challenging.

Our students decided a third level climb was highest priority. I was concerned about the 2010 bot; Too much focus on the endgame, to the point we could barely score in teleop. We've had a few different concepts, with way more development than I anticipated.

With that said, we finally got our climber working. We did a proof of concept to climb to the second and touch the top bar, just need to finish our mechanism and it will be fully functioning and scoring on the 30 point bar by the weekend.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Pics & Videos or it doesn't exist.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Our climber design has been plagued by complexities in supporting it as well as clearance problems getting it to grab bars but not touch the box on the top of the pyramid as well as having enough room to support minor alignment issues.

-Mike

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Is there a specific rule preventing you from touching the pyramid goal, or is it just something you are trying to avoid on general principles? I don't remember any rules that would make it illegal.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Our design uses linear rods and bearings to guide the cylinders and fix the gripping "claws" into the right position and angle. At the last stage of our climb, the rods were hitting the box on the pyramid and preventing it from climbing to it's extent. So it was less a matter of rules and more a matter of physical interference driving our decision.

We were able to fix it last night but the CAD design has had to be extremely accurate in every detail and it's taking forever. The teacher over the team was worried enough about the progress that he has some of the team building a second robot that doesn't use this design and is just a "run and gun" bot with 10 pt climb which we got working and tested yesterday as well.

-Mike

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

We have a similar design and the box at the top is worrying me immensely. I don't want us to get to the top and then only get 20 points because our robot hits the box when we're an inch too low.

The GDC really thought through how to make the 30 point climb incredibly difficult.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

I can say with 100% confidence that I have no idea if our climbing mechanism will work. But we're building two of them! :D

What an awesome game!

-Mike

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

First test done today. So far we can get to 20 points but have yet to add the final piece for the 30 points! Man, this is gonna be one fun competition to watch!

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Here is a video of a potential climber. It is a single purpose robot that climbs the corner of the pyramid and dump 4 discs into the basket on top to make a consistent 50 points. the key to getting the robot to climb over the crossbar joints is the use of a freewheeling star-wheel. The rotating/lifting arms provide 2 points of contact and the third point with the star-wheel should provide stability while climbing. What is not shown are the 2 retracting "V" blocks at the bottom of the robot that rest on the crossbars between climbing phases. Also a clamp to the corner upright bar would be required between climbing phases. The disc dumper could be spring loaded with a solenoid trigger release and dump the discs when the robot reaches the third level. Of course the devil is in the details...its one thing to make a little wooden model and quite another thing to make a 100+ LB robot to climb consistently in competition. I hope these ideas are helpful to some of the teams struggling with this concept. See the you-tube below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ouR...=youtube_gdata

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

lol, this year you can point that cylinder upwards, add a hook and call it a 10pt climber :P

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Well, seeing as this thread was revived, I just want to say that I feel ok with my initial intuition: no one came up with a really simple 30 pt. climb design that I missed, and looking back, i'm pretty sure that the 30 pt. climb really was beyond my team's reach for 2013.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

I am not sure I agree. Our team built a reliable 30 point climber with almost no budget, and no manufacturing support. New they did decide to only climb, which made things a lot easier. But a method of climbing that to the top of the pyramid without being super complicated was possible.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Yeah, I feel that our robot's climber is pretty simple. It's compact enough to allow a 30-point climber in conjunction with a shooter.

We hit a few roadblocks in Orlando that prevented all but one 30- point climb, but now with an updated hook I think we should be good to go with our climber. And we were versatile enough to claim some sort of climb almost every match.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Now I'm wondering if we will see a <5 sec 20 point climb? Basically the elite frisbee shooters upping their 10 point climb to a 20, but be able to do it just as fast...I guess I imagined the teams that used the 2010 grab and flip method would implement that for a quick 20 points this year, but haven't seen anyone do it yet.

Has anyone seen an inside corner climber?

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

191 climbed on the inside of the corner but only for 10 pts.
My guess is they'll try and make that a 30pt. climber (or 20 atleast) for champs.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Team Hammond (71) has shown an inside corner climber this weekend at the Wisconsin Regional. They got to a Lever 2 climb (20 points) in the match that I saw today.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Designing, re-designing, fretting, building, reconfiguring, testing, re-designing, re-testing, more fretting and worrying, breaking and fixing, tweaking, waiting for the right opportunity, ordering more parts, tweaking and testing, worrying, testing and tweaking, and then finally using it and having it work - quite quickly even + dumping at the top. WOOHOO! Now just keep practing, watching for loose hardware, improving technique, looking for tweaks, etc., etc.

Just another season in FIRST.

This year's climber was the most difficult thing we ever built. It completely took over our design/build/test/practice experience. I had my doubts it was the right thing to do or would ever be worth it. But seeing that thing at the top of the tower with four colored discs in the basket helps me forget about all the stress that lead up to it.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

We had the same situation. It was the most difficult thing we ever built.
It started on day 3 when we wanted "just" to climb (and dump).
In week 2 we had a design and started to build it, but we felt it wasn't good enough so in week 3 we changed the design completely to a new "simple" one.
In the mid of week 4 we had the climber ready. we started testing it, some things were tweaked , we had to adjust things and we found ourselves 2 days before shipping with an arm that works 1% of the times. We thought on our next steps and decided to ship the robot without the arm (Withholding allowence rule) and changed most of the design. 2 Weeks of building the new design passed and no climbing. 3 days before competition we changed the design and 6 hour before the practice day of the Israeli Regional the robot has climbed (2 am).

That season was really full of ups and down. "that idea is definitely going to work", "yes, it's going to work", "I have an idea that id fefinetely going to work".... that rutine(4 week of that rutine) was really depressing. We ended up with a beautiful climbing robot but the way was harsh. It was our most difficult season.

Re: Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience
 

Now that we're done and we didn't climb for 30, the simplest our design ever got was a single stage elevator on a pivot, with both fixed and mobile hooks for the corner. We knew we wanted a corner climb from about day 2 or 3 because the colored discs are what made climbing worth it, and we didn't want to interfere with inside shooters.

The design could have been made one step simpler if instead of a rotary joint we had a fixed elevator with a piston to rotate the robot, but even then, designing corner hooks that are easy to line up with and work without interference just wasn't in the cards for us.