Think Gravity!!
 

Our team developed a mechanism that allows the boxes to be quickly inverted (lid down to lid up) into the correct orientation for our robot. It is simple, yet very efficient and in the end we probably won't even use it due to the many abilities our robot has.

Try thinking outside the bin.
I know of at least one upsidedown bin stacker.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nothing is impossible, if you can figure it out.

upside down
 

Who doesn't stack upside down? Our grabbers were (by miracle, not design) perfectly designed to be able to pick up, re-orient to lid down position, and stack. We can also pick up a stack without tipping it just with a little different box placement. We got lucky, unfortunately our mentors were more interested in getting sleep than letting us practice driving (we finished at 10 pm the night before ship and they wouldn't let us stay to practice. One mentor said the one thing he was proud of was that we were never working past 10 pm. . . . . grrrrr. . . . ) So we don't know how effcient we will be at this.

Our team started out designing a top-down lifter and orienter, but we opted to stick to the top-up design as it was easier for us to build a bot to do this. Top down would be sweet though, as it is easier to orient the boxes this way (they are top-heavy).

We have a pneumatic "arm" it comes down on the boxes, we can manipulate them to be rightside up in most cases. Sometimes we have trouble if its all the way upside down. Its the "arm" extension on back of the bot, its comes down and we drive forward a bit and the boxes magically turn the rightside up. works very well. Sorry i don't have a better picture right now... i'll try to find one.

Nobody has posted a response to the original question.

Has anyone developed a method to flip boxes from Lid Down to Lid Up?

we have a design that can flip the bins from lid down to lid up, as well as any other direction needed.we can grab the bins in any positions.we can also stack very high, can limbo, all wheel drive( nice pushing force and rather fast), and can push stacks from the top of the ramp....:D i would post pics here but u will have to go to twistedblizzard.com to see them...also there will be video soon

Our team has not come to a consensus about posting pictures yet. But our favorite and easiest way of orienting is upside down to rightside up. The biggest hind I can give you is to think rotations... times two.

By flip I meant flip/rotate/grab/hit/drive into/throw... any means of getting the boxes in the proper orientation.

...
 

If you take a look at our robot, it's got a VERY simple mechanism for getting SIDEWAYS boxes rightside-up. It's slightly more work to do from the upside-down position, and our stacker is not designed for lifting upside-down boxes, so we're intending on targetting only those that are sideways, unless there are too many upside-down.

We had to scrap our original design due to the weight of our other components, so this was our best choice of re-design of our stacking module.

But then again, that's only if we're choosing to stack :D

I'm so pleased to see so many stacker robots under 14" tall. I'm really looking forward to our first regional, to see how many different designs were implemented to perform the same tasks that we do. This will help us in designing in future years. If you see someone with a silver #1089 jersey peering into your pit, please don't beat them with a stick... we're just trying to see how it all works :)

We started out thinking of a graber design but dropped it. We did have a way to flip the boxes either right side up or upside down. It was very simple. We took to pads and placed them on bearings and found a spot on the box that you had to hit. Using stops and a set hieght. Once you lifted it would used gravity to flip the boxes to whatever side you wanted to stack them. We dropped that design because we wanted to throw the boxes. We can use our thrower to stack and orient the boxes to lid side up. It is a very simple design. We have two Forks that we use to hit the boxes and flip them or we slip under on side of boxes that are on their sides and lift and they flip up right. We can stack up to 5 high. I hope we post pictures but if you want to see it go here. http://www.archergeeks1022.org/imagelibrary/default.asp

and click on heavy weight