Run out of battery power? No way.
Let's do some math:
150 lbs ~= 70 kg
Assume you want to raise your robot 2 meters (78 inches)
PE = m*g*h = 70 kg * 9.8 m/s^2 * 2 = 1400 Joules
The battery has an 18 Amp-hour capacity (although you don't this much out of it in practice).
18 Ah * 12 V = 18 * 12 * 3600 Volts*Amps*seconds = 78 kJ
So climbing would use just under 2% of your battery power.
Or, looked at another way, let's assume your robot has a maximum speed of 4 meters per second (13 feet/second). To accelerate to top speed requires
KE = 1/2 * m * v^2 = 1/2 * 70 kg * (4 m/s) ^ 2 = 560 Joules
So, if we pretend that all our mechanisms are frictionless and 100% efficient, sprinting from one side of the field to the other three times is very roughly equivalent to climbing the tower.
Quote:
Originally Posted by F22Rapture
I could definitely see using pneumatics to actuate claws, but aren't they mostly useful for pushing and not pulling, as the majority of the movement in the climb would be?
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No. In fact, I've heard it argued that you should always use pneumatics to pull, rather than push, because that way you don't put the rod into compression and risk bending it.