This year has been an interesting year for scaling mechanisms as teams try to meet some very difficult design constraints. With many teams deciding to go under the low bar, the packaging problem that comes with a scaling mechanism can get very challenging. I wanted to create a thread to talk about all of the awesome "out of the box" ways that teams have solved this problem.
Obviously what comes to mind is
118's grappling hook - as far as I know we've never seen anything like that before.
But for my contribution I want to spotlight
SWAG 4060:
https://www.facebook.com/swag4060/vi...02735356484448
Their scaling mechanism is a long inflatable tube with a hook at the end! It doesn't even look like they can scale until the last 20 seconds, when a giant tube unfurls out of their robot and attaches to the rung. Their hanger got them all the way to the finals at Auburn, but sadly they didn't get enough points to get to PNW Champs.
What awesome scaling mechanisms have you seen?