Climbing Mechanism Ideas

[RSaunders]

Originally Posted by Alex.q

It seems like a lot of ideas require claws or grippers which do not rotate on the pipe. Would a pipe wrench mechanism work in this situation? It would allow you to pivot your robot up in one direction without rotating back due to your center of gravity. I don't know if it would properly grip the pyramid or if it would damage the pipes, but perhaps someone could test this.

After working on assembling a practice tower, I don't thing that a non-slip grip on a pipe is a good idea. The pipes we used weren't powder coated, and pipe wrenches visibly damaged them with less than 50 pounds of force. To grip the pipe without damaging the finish seems very difficult. I guess it's a function of how many square inches of contact patch you have, but the sub-inch contact patch of a pipe wrench isn't enough.

We've been looking at leverage against the tower support posts below the horizontal pipes, they are in the same zone. A pretty compact "claw" can make solid three-point contact with a single Level of the pyramid and support 150 pounds with compression contact only.