Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
I looked at this robot at San Diego. Not too closely. I never saw it lift anything. But, I thought it was an interesting idea. really out of the box. Not sure how it was supposed to work.
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They had a terrible time getting through inspection. The old "bolt head" problem. They didn't leave enough margin to allow for bolt heads sticking out of the frame and other parts.
They had spring loaded rails that tucked up against the side of the robot. After they were released the rolled ramps were unrolled and hung over the side to form a ramp. The unrolling was active, a spindle in the center was turned and forced the deck out like a garage door. It was a really out of the box solution.
I only saw the ramps unrolled twice, once when they were in the pits and were shaving the width down so they could get in the sizing box, and once on the practice field. On the practice field it didn't look like they deployed as intended, since the rolled material did not bridge the gap between the rails but fell through it. I only saw that from a distance and I was doing something else at the time so I didn't get a close look.
In one match, I saw the rails deployed early and caused no end of trouble. They might have secured them permanently after that as I never saw them open again.