[EricH]

I've got a few ideas.

Linear lift system. A number of teams in 2004 used a telescoping pole to put their hook on the bar. 1 motor, 1 tape measure, and a set of nested poles, if you do it right. 330 in that year used a more traditional forklift-type lift to get up.

Arm. You can do a smaller one to grab the vertical poles, or a longer or multi-joint arm to get up to the top. You're going to need a lot of torque on that joint to do that, though.

Look for pictures of robots from 2004 in CD-Media. There are a number of ideas there.