Bridge Balancing Device

[AdamHeard]

973 was also interested in hanging via this method, and it drove the design of our subframe (So we could straddle the barrier, and strafe over to the bridge).

This case was analyzed by us. The statics are just too razor thing on it for it to work reliably (or possibly at all for most teams CGs) due to the 14" rule really limiting how long that flap can be.

If we had optimized our robot by putting the CG pretty much on edge, it was far more possible, but that was extremely limiting for the rest of the robot design.

Our decision was to play wait and see (as we didn't compete until later in season) in terms of legality.

[Garret]

What if instead of laying the plate down and hanging of the side, you just laid the plate down behind you while you are on the bridge and have an alliance partner drive on top of it. I think this would allow you to hang off farther than you normally would be able to (especially if your wheelbase couldn't safely hang half the robot over the edge). This was something we thought of in one of our early brainstorming sessions during the season, I am not sure why we didn't pursue it further.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Garret

What if instead of laying the plate down and hanging of the side, you just laid the plate down behind you while you are on the bridge and have an alliance partner drive on top of it. I think this would allow you to hang off farther than you normally would be able to (especially if your wheelbase couldn't safely hang half the robot over the edge). This was something we thought of in one of our early brainstorming sessions during the season, I am not sure why we didn't pursue it further.

Teams did variations of this throughout the season. It doesn't even need to be a full plate. For instance, I remember MOE's "harpoon" (not as scary as it sounds), a rounded cylinder they'd stick under the middle robot's bumpers to keep themselves from tipping off the edge. Quite cool. We had a similar hook that could latch under the middle 'bot's bumpers for the same effect (but we mostly had the middle spot anyway).

[kenavt]

Are you talking about something along the lines of this?

As for their results... here's their first regional. Not sure about their second.