Best bridge manipulators/balancing mechanisms?

[theawesome1730]

Originally Posted by Treadus

But maybe I'm a little biased...

Nah. You aren't biased, you just love your sisters! And while this seems like I'm being self centered, I do think that we had one of the best bridge manipulation systems. We use our entire robot as the appendage (see attached pic)

And we have done some research and found out that we are ranked in the top 20 in the world for teleop points so we have determined that we did not make it to championships this year purely because of bad luck and/or the Woodie Flowers curse

[waitwhat?]

Originally Posted by slijin

Does anyone know whether their battery shifting mechanism was particularly useful as a balancing aid? It was something we considered early on, but rejected because we didn't think the ~17lbs of battery and apparatus would be particularly significant, among other reasons.

To answer the OP, 118. Their entire frame was built for passive bridge manipulation, and a good portion of their mechanisms were devoted to balance assists. They had a beautiful system to assist a double balance, complete with lights to indicate an unbalanced v balanced bridge. And that's all before their stinger.

I was skeptical of the effectiveness of this mechanism as well. However, given the fact that our battery was one of the heaviest and highest mounted components on our robot, we actually were able to use the weight shifter relatively well. The battery sits about 2 feet off the ground, and at least 90% of the robot is beneath is.

That being said, just to give some perspective, we parked our bot balanced, by itself on one of the bridges on the practice field, and we were able to get the bridge to start rocking back and forth without moving our wheels, only shifting the battery. Much more effective than I had initially thought.

[Chexposito]

One of my favorites would have to be 2056's manipulator/ball gatherer. It was used in unexpected ways when they would shove it under the bridge to aid the balance.

Some people have mentioned 1730's passive manipulator. For those unfamiliar: http://youtu.be/g_7ljqbIdi8?t=15s
I like the idea behind this design. I haven't seen anything like it other than theirs but if someone has go ahead and bring it up. With video/pictures

[kiasam111]

I really liked 233, Team Pink's bridge manipulator. They just pushed it down and it covered right over the bumper, eliminating user error.

[Samwaldo]

On our robot (team 1099, the disco techs) our shooters, ball picker upper, mechanism to move ball in shooter, electrical board and battery (over half our wait) moved, allowing us to move a large ammount of wieght while also changing the angle of our shooter. This helped while on the bridge alot!