Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience

[mikegrundvig]

Our design uses linear rods and bearings to guide the cylinders and fix the gripping "claws" into the right position and angle. At the last stage of our climb, the rods were hitting the box on the pyramid and preventing it from climbing to it's extent. So it was less a matter of rules and more a matter of physical interference driving our decision.

We were able to fix it last night but the CAD design has had to be extremely accurate in every detail and it's taking forever. The teacher over the team was worried enough about the progress that he has some of the team building a second robot that doesn't use this design and is just a "run and gun" bot with 10 pt climb which we got working and tested yesterday as well.

-Mike

[Donut]

Originally Posted by mikegrundvig

Our design uses linear rods and bearings to guide the cylinders and fix the gripping "claws" into the right position and angle. At the last stage of our climb, the rods were hitting the box on the pyramid and preventing it from climbing to it's extent. So it was less a matter of rules and more a matter of physical interference driving our decision.

We were able to fix it last night but the CAD design has had to be extremely accurate in every detail and it's taking forever. The teacher over the team was worried enough about the progress that he has some of the team building a second robot that doesn't use this design and is just a "run and gun" bot with 10 pt climb which we got working and tested yesterday as well.

-Mike

We have a similar design and the box at the top is worrying me immensely. I don't want us to get to the top and then only get 20 points because our robot hits the box when we're an inch too low.

The GDC really thought through how to make the 30 point climb incredibly difficult.

[Michael Corsetto]

I can say with 100% confidence that I have no idea if our climbing mechanism will work. But we're building two of them!

What an awesome game!

-Mike

[dellagd]

First test done today. So far we can get to 20 points but have yet to add the final piece for the 30 points! Man, this is gonna be one fun competition to watch!

[BSEDGELEY]

Here is a video of a potential climber. It is a single purpose robot that climbs the corner of the pyramid and dump 4 discs into the basket on top to make a consistent 50 points. the key to getting the robot to climb over the crossbar joints is the use of a freewheeling star-wheel. The rotating/lifting arms provide 2 points of contact and the third point with the star-wheel should provide stability while climbing. What is not shown are the 2 retracting "V" blocks at the bottom of the robot that rest on the crossbars between climbing phases. Also a clamp to the corner upright bar would be required between climbing phases. The disc dumper could be spring loaded with a solenoid trigger release and dump the discs when the robot reaches the third level. Of course the devil is in the details...its one thing to make a little wooden model and quite another thing to make a 100+ LB robot to climb consistently in competition. I hope these ideas are helpful to some of the teams struggling with this concept. See the you-tube below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ouR...=youtube_gdata