Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

If the ROBOT does damage the TOWER by hanging sideways, the team could be excluded from any future matches until the problem is corrected.

Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

I'd say that if three robots somehow manage to hang from a vertical/hang from each other off a vertical, and the tower collapses, and none of the three has previously shown a tendency for field damage, IMO, there's nothing that can really be done other than to issue a Team Update saying that you can't do that and repair the tower.

Under <G24>, you can get a warning. As it's kind of hard to continue that kind of damage, no red card (unless the tower was already visibly starting to fail when the third robot climbed on). Under <G26>, the team has to take corrective action, but the only real corrective action in this case would be to not have every robot hanging at one point, assuming that none of the robots had previously done any damage to the tower.

Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

The trick is that there's two potential failure modes for the tower. There's buckling/bending failure (whichever comes first) from the overall moment and axial loading on the tower. As EricH says, this can't really be remedied beyond "Don't do that!"

The second possibility is a point load failure if a team doesn't sufficiently spread out their "hands" that are transferring the moment load to the pipe. This would end with crushing the pipe at the location of the gripper. This is a less likely failure mode, as the gripper must also withstand a load great enough to crush the pipe, which seems a little unlikely. If someone does manage to make this mistake, however, it's an issue that IS resolvable with a redesign of the gripper or the addition of something below the gripper to provide a separate point to support the moment load.

Also, the one word answer is somewhat dissatisfying, as it really doesn't address the issue of whether the tower will stand up to this load. Which is worrisome, as I'm pretty certain it IS possible to fail the tower if you're trying something really foolish.

Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

It'll be interesting to see the inspection checklist.

Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

Forget about the tower, how strong does the end effector have to be to repeatidly hang that weight??:eek:

Re: Sideways Hanging - Yes or No
 

It depends on how you build it. If you have the "hands" pretty far apart, then the strength requirement is similar to just hanging the robot from the horizontal bar.

Draw a free body diagram, see how it works.