Playing well with others while scaling the tower

[ToddF]

I haven't seen this issue raised by anyone else, though I admit I haven't been monitoring CD this year as closely as I have in the past. It seems like teams are leaving their climbing mechanisms for development later in the season, and may not have noticed an issue which may affect your drive drain design.

I wanted to point out something important about geometric constraints when scaling the tower. If your robot exceeds 24 inches wide, including the bumpers, and you plan to scale with your bumpers sliding up the tower, there are a couple unpleasant consequences.
1) If you scale adjacent to the wall, the wall will push you off center. This means you might only be able to scale from the center face of the tower.
2) If you scale from the center face of the tower, and you overhang to the sides, you may interfere with adjacent robots. If they get there first, you may be blocked from scaling. If you get there first, and you only scale to the minimum height, you may block your alliance members from scaling.

Possible solutions:
1) Have a very narrow robot.
2) If your robot is wide, scale first, and raise yourself 5" MINIMUM higher than necessary, to allow your neighbor to scale next to you.
3) Plan to be the only robot on your alliance to scale. This will limit your chances to be on a winning alliance.
4) Chamfer the side of your robot that contacts the tower such that you play nice with others. (see attached figure)
5) Use some other robot/scaling geometry that doesn't have this issue.

I'm publicizing this issue because we want to be on alliances with multiple climbing robots, and putting it out there makes it more likely this will happen.