In addition to the videos that Todd linked to, you may want to study the "Strategic Design" YouTube video posted by Karthik before you really get started. It may also be of benefit to study game videos and compare the driving characteristics of robots with long chassis vs. that of robots with wide chassis, especially when traversing the scoring platforms at an angle. You may also notice that many of the fast HP stackers (i.e. the Einstein winning alliance) did not need ramps tethered to their robot (or a third robot).
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Originally Posted by Tweedy399
One thing that my team and many others teams did was add an RC "stabilizer". This would grab the RC initially and follow it all the way to the top of the stack to secure the RC and the whole stack. This can even not be powered but just ride with the tote manipulator and the stack. We have found great success in this and I would highly recommend it.
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This echos what a mentor from one of the Einstein winners said in the 13th post of the following thread. We added an RC stabilizer after our first Regional. If we had done our strategic analysis properly, we would not have added it. We would have had it on our robot from the beginning and we would have done better at our first Regional.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=136979
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Originally Posted by Dunngeon
Reiterating what Todd and Eric said, it really seems like you're wanting to cherry pick things that worked for other teams. Looking at the successful designs is great, but what do you gain in the long term from building a good, robust robot for THIS game?
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One of the biggest mistakes I see teams (FRC and FLL) making is that they copy without understanding what they are copying. It is good to study another teams design to add to your repertoire of design techniques and mechanisms. When you copy only one piece of someone's design without understanding the whole, you may miss copying another part of their design that is crucial to the success of the part you are copying.
The reliability that you are after has as much to do with the quality of construction as the design of the robot. Your team may want to look at the construction practices (mechanical and electrical) in the off season and make any necessary improvements in the off-season. Your off-season robot can be the final test for any training you do. Monochron's comments about the lift are spot on. Or lift mechanism was built crooked and when it was first installed, there was so much friction it had to be forced up and down. I highly recommend the "Electronics Tutorial" videos published by Code Orange. We had ZERO electrical problems this year through two Regionals and Champs.
http://www.teamcodeorange.com/tutorials-electronics.php