[EricH]

Originally Posted by Callbt

Can you use a "pole climber" to place the hook at top and then winch the cable/rope back in?

Nothing against it.

However, there is one thing that a LOT of robots had in common in 2004: If, for some reason, their hook came off it's pole, it was impossible, or close to it, for them to try again. This led to a number of hooks dragging on the floor. I remember one match where a team's "pole climber" hook got stuck in my team's lift's lightening holes, which were admittedly rather big, but it was just bad luck there. They'd managed to drop the hook, too, so they were stuck for the duration of the match.

My team never had to worry about that; our policy of "All deployables shall be retractable" plus a key design feature we had had led us to have a very solidly attached single-tooth hook fixed to the top of our lift, so no deploying that one...