14" Bar Stragtegies?

[oreocookeee]

i had a simple idea to allow a robot to be able to steel a stack of bins, and fit under the bar, but not at the same time. imagine that on one side of the robot there is a scissor mechanism powered by one piston. it compacts to only a few inches and can extend to several feet. now, if there were "fingers" for gripping the bins attached to each of the outer joints (the ones that dont form an X), the scissor mechanism could extend upward, while moving the fingers closer together at the same time. if designed right, it could easily fit within 14 inches and be able to clamp onto about four boxes. however there is one problem: the fingers would have to be extendable so that they dont break the size limit of the robot. to solve this, i imagined using another scissor thing, at right angles to the other one, and connected to the middle joints (the ones that do form an X), and a rod connected to the outer joints of that would move closer and farther from the plane of the orignial scissor to extend the fingers, similar to how to fingers move closer and away from eachother.

this is kind of a hard idea to grasp without a visual aid, but it just might work.