[Jim Zondag]

I will confess that experience was a big contributing factor in our decision on this design element. Way back in 1999, we were faced with a similar problem of hanging from a vertical pipe or climbing on a platform. We chose to do both that year. We never thought of doing a 'footless' pipe grabber which could suspend from the pipe only until we saw Team 190's latch that year. It was a very cool design, basically a snap action Pony clamp.
In 2002 we had to grab and tow a goal from a vertical pipe and many types of latches and grabbers were built by many teams.
In 2000 and 2004 we were faced with grabbing an overhead bar.
Our 2010 solution is a collection of ideas we have previously built or seen implemented successfully in the past.

Because we had actually built and developed solutions for all of these challenges in the past, we immediately saw the advantages of the vertical pipe grab:
1. Fast aquisition.
2. Can grab from all 4 corners.
3. Compact.
4. Low CG
5. Simple (one motor, passive latch)
6. Robust
7. Crowd Pleasing

Our functional target was to be able to drive from mouth of the goal to the tower, dock and hang in 10 seconds or less. These targets eliminated many tall arm designs. It also put the arm on the back of the machine so we would not have to waste time spinning around. All in all it was a cool device to build and it has been bullet proof through 6 tournaments so far. It is easy to make compact mechanisms robust, since the weight penalty for doing so is much less than it is for physically larger components.