Who Has a Bridge-Balancing Mechanism?

[AllenGregoryIV]

3847 got our jacks working on Saturday at Lone Star, never got a chance to use them though, but we should be good for St. Louis.

[Team Leader]

Here is a video of our team in competition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjo4p...ure=plpp_video

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Also relevant are special features designed to make balancing (particularly triples) easier by methods other than actuating the bridge into a balanced position. How successful have these each been?

931 has a lead screw going the entire length of the robot, with weights (including the battery) that can be moved forward our backwards to change their CG. The position of the weight also factored in to their ability to go over the bump. Whether or not this would be helpful for a triple I don't know; we were with them in two tournaments, neither of which had a triple balance.

[Jetweb]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

- 179's innovative under-the-bridge hanger (Has this been used in competition? Was it ruled illegal with 118's side-hanger?)

We were approached by the head ref at our first event and told that our design was deemed legal by the GDC and we were not penalized during our few attempts at hanging.

We ran into an unexpected problem at the Orlando regional with bridge deflection not allowing us to hang during a competition match. While there we did come up with a fix that unfortunately did not get to be attempted in competition. We do believe we have the bugs worked out and will be hanging at the south florida regional in a few days.

[Boe]

i dont know if this counts but team 2175 has a braking mechanism on our robot that allows us to hold our ground on the bridge. Its just two small cylinders that push into the wheels and lock our whole drive train in place

you can see one of them in picture 78 here (on the leftmost wheel)
http://robotics.mnmsa.org/media/photos/

and you can see them in action here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG9Di730AZk
~58 seconds in

256 has one - It's 27"x37"x40", weighs a little over 90 pounds, and just happens to score basketballs.

In all truth, our whole robot is our balancer; It has a few automatic balancing modes, a brake mode, which resets it to it's previous position in the event it's moved, and a few gyros to help it know it's position.

Surprisingly, robots can be great balancing mechanisms by themselves with a few sensors and some software.

[Bjenks548]

3098 had one for eliminations, they changed their bridge lowering device for a four bar "stinger". 610's deserves more of a shout out as well, their bridge lowering device can point straight down to stop a bridge from swinging too far down.

[TheMadCADer]

Well...148 isn't the only Texas team with a bridge mechanism anymore...

Tune in to Lone Star and you'll see a few. Hard to say how many, but I know of a couple.

And some of them work really well with long robots...

[372 lives on]

at Seattle i saw two teams with double "peg legs" I saw them both work in practice but never during the competition

2046(never had a need for it), 3662(removed for weight?)

both where original designs from what i saw.

[Djur]

3958 had one at the Boston Regional. It's really cool, but from what I could see, it took a while to use it to actually balance with it.

[qzrrbz]

GTW -- 2056 just showed (successfully) a pneumatic balancer on coop bridge, don't recall seeing that before

strapped onto the side of their collector

[Ian Boady]

Check out team 118 at the Northeast Regionals in Hartford, CT.

The G10/Bridge grappler is gone. Now they have a complete bridge package. Pretty impressive.

[nikeairmancurry]

Originally Posted by qzrrbz

GTW -- 2056 just showed (successfully) a pneumatic balancer on coop bridge, don't recall seeing that before

strapped onto the side of their collector

It also looks like 1114 has one on the back of their pretty machine..

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by nikeairmancurry

It also looks like 1114 has one on the back of their pretty machine..

I can confirm this, we added the device on Thursday of GTRW. Special thanks to Teams 67, 148, 217 and 469 for inspiring us to go in this direction.

[Vikingtech2054]

Team 2054 has one, here is a video of a promo for Michigan State Competition
This is the Thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...highlight=2054
This is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXBz...ature=youtu.be

We have a Big Arm that comes down outside the frame on a pnuematic cylinder, we have used it in double and triple balances. it worked quite well, we balanced every time we got a chance to at niles.