Quote:
Originally Posted by ksafin
Yup, pretty much.
Another design that came across my mind was kind of like a forklift type design where you have a forklift that can get from the floor to the very top of the robot. Attached to the carriage of the forklift is simply an 18x18 sheet of strong metal. It's in vertical position when game starts, but then at end game, this 18x18 metal is expanded; its basically now flat with the floor.
A robot can then get on the metal sheet, and the forklift of the lifting bot can raise the robot & the metal sheet to the top of the bot, and then viola.
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If you were to do this, there would be two things I would make sure you push on the design (and I'm sure you've already considered them, but there's no harm repeating them on the forum).
First, and most obvious, that forklift needs to be extremely sturdy and strong. It needs to support a robot up 24". Not only does it need to actually be able to LIFT the robot up, it needs to be able to HOLD the robot up, even after power is cut to the field, since points aren't totaled until all parts come to rest. So that forklift needs to be strong enough to lift, sturdy enough to hold the robot, and able to lock itself at the top (or any place from bottom to top).
Secondly, were you to design a forklift, I would try to make it more like an elevator. Forklifts generally lift things that don't really move (wood, metal, etc), but this is lifting a robot. A robot that, probably, has wheels. Therefore, it can roll. And I would be terrified if, for whatever reason, the robot going up started to roll, and then plummeted. So I would build it more like an elevator. Have the place to drive on, and 3 "walls" extending from the plate to prevent robots from rolling off. Maybe even design a door to cover that last opening. Alternatively, you could design your forklift to be less that 18", and have it lift a robot up from between their wheels (assuming they have a large enough gap in the center of their drive base), thus preventing them from rolling and taking the robot with them. Though this seems like a design that would be able to support a lesser number of robots.