G04

[aldaeron]

We are working on our Level 3 climber and are quite worried about how to meet Rule G04 (reprinted below).

Obviously no one wants to tumble from Level 3 to the floor, but without power and special tools many of the ideas we have come up with are not looking good. Some of our thoughts (and their downfalls):

- Get a beefy worm gear drive
-> Would need power to reverse it
- Use a good number of CIMs
-> Would back drive when power lost and robot would fall =(
- Use a ratcheting mechanism of some sort
-> Unless we have a really tall person it will be hard to disengage from the floor
- Use a pneumatic piston to drive in a lock somewhere to hold the robot
-> We would have to drain the air and slide the lock out. ALso difficult without a tall person.



There seems to be a direct conflict between keeping the robot locked securely on the pyramid and removing it without power or special tools. Perhaps I am overlooking something simple and maybe you can help.

We are planning to submit a Q&A if we can't think of something good that allows us zero risk of falling off level 3 and meets G04.

-matto-



Rule G04:

After the MATCH, ROBOTS may only be removed from a PYRAMID under the following conditions:

A. by the TEAM while standing on the floor without special equipment,
B. unpowered,
C. and under the supervision of a FIRST Technical Advisor (FTA), FTA Assistant, Referee, or Field Supervisor.


Additionally, if any part of the ROBOT is in Level 3, TEAMS are required to attach a FIRST supplied belay line, detailed in Section 2.2.5, to their ROBOT to spot a ROBOT while the TEAM removes it from the PYRAMID.

Violation: YELLOW CARD