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

Our design is a basic extension of what we did in 2010 - same basic concept, but double the level of complexity to get to the third level. In fact, the level of complexity to go from 2 to 3 is actually less than that required to go from 1 to 2 with this design!

As for adding levels... the changes wouldn't be non-trivial, but they would be direct and obvious. Of course, to go 10 levels we would need a much bigger frame perimeter :p There's an alternate concept that branched off from this one that would allow us to tackle any number of levels successfully - basically the same design with a few added tweaks that amount to a lot of control complexity. But limiting to 3 levels proved much easier in the design.

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

"Oh baby, dey goin' fo' da hookup!"

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

We have an idea but is it worth the weight and possible fall.
We may just do a 10 easy or 20 hard over a 30 very hard and a lot of weight

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

That's true for us, too. Once we're at two, going to three should be essentially a repeat of what we just did... (And to answer the question, we should be able to climb an arbitrary number of levels given time and battery life.)

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

Partly for that reason, and partly for added stability, our design is basically doubled on each level. Grabbing twice instead of one per level should prevent any catastrophic failures!

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

We think we have a solution. Of course, I thought that a few days ago, also.

The challenge is significant, the answers will probably be subtle adjustments to a solid concept. The biggest problems are initial docking (we want it to be simple, quick, robust, and tolerant of poor angles of approach), transitioning from level 1 to level 2 (once you have that, 2-3 is rinse and repeat), and getting all the way up to the top of level 3, so that you are totally above level 2.

Rolling off the post and flipping over backwards are certainly problems. CG will be critical in the climb.

And you must really double check all the geometries out.

Is it risky? Yes.
Is the risk worth the reward? We think so.

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

Another challenge for some may be the 54" radius. Unless I'm misreading from the Q&A, that is with respect to the floor - so if your robot inverts, it needs to do so inside of a 54" cylinder. They certainly didn't make this a trivial challenge this year.

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

This was a question posed to the Q&A a couple of times even and, yes, the 54" cylinder is always with respect to the floor, not the robot. If your climbing scheme includes rotating the robot like the video posted earlier in this thread, you'll need to be mindful no part of your robot breaks the cylinder, including bumpers.

One of the more challenging 'size' restrictions we've had.

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

Here is our plan that we are trying to flesh out
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B44TPv-TccPZTTVWLUV0Z0JlM1U/edit
Hope it works

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

Our concept it somewhat of a "Monkey Bar climbing" approach.

Here is a quick video I threw together yesterday to demonstrate the basic concept to our team. Please excuse the extra enthusiasm I exhibit towards it's potential success, I'm just excited we have something that might work.

http://youtu.be/9kxMmYTVo0E

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

How would you rotate/tilt the bottom half of the bot without applying torque to the horizontal pipe. Tilting or rotating the bottom half of the bot on a unfixed upper point would just change the c.o.g and swing it under the bar further. I think ???

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

I think we've found a good solution. I'm especially excited about the possibility of integrating a shooter into the design. Early testing wasn't as awesome as I might have hoped, but I still feel like we have something that will work.

The GDC has done a very good job with this challenge. I've heard some top FIRSTers
saying that only 20 or so teams in the world will be able to hang for 30. At first, I thought that was extreemely pessimistic. Now, I'm not so sure.

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

After pounding our head at it a few days, we have 2 designs that we think are within our team's fabrication abilities. I would argue that only one of them is simple but that is an opinion. We're building prototypes of them now and won't know how truly well they work until probably Tuesday next week.

I think "simple" is a relative term for the 30 point climb. A "simple" mechanism for climbing could still have quite a bit of movement.

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

Wwharrgarbl....

I thought we were working toward a doable design for corner climbing, but I was working from the 2011 robot relative right cylinder. Field relative makes things one heck of a lot more difficult for corner climbing. I'm glad we're designing and prototyping shooting mechanisms in tandem. Back to the drawing board and all that...

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

is there a rule for going past the top of the tower with the top end of your robot?