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

[slijin]

Originally Posted by Whippet

So, would anyone care to explain what kind of gearboxes were used in 2010 for the "Grab and twist" method?

Here's 33's whitepaper on their design. 383 also uploaded videos of their ridiculous unsafe testing procedure to Youtube; they should still be around. Searching for 148's robot Armadillo should also get you some video of their hanger at work; their CAD should also be in CD-Media.

Keep in mind you should only be using these for reference. The 54" rule complicates these designs a lot this year, and the reduction/motor(s) you'll need will be entirely dependent on your climbing design.

[TroyCDH]

Greetings,

After reading about this "Stinger" idea that extended BELOW the robot frame and wheels years past, I have a question.

Is it legal to have a climbing mast and winch, were the mast would end up extending below the robot as well? Keeping in mind an overall height of 84 inches and the cylinder diameter of 54.

I read the rules and see I nothing against it.

Thanks, and good luck to all.

Troy

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by TroyCDH

Greetings,

After reading about this "Stinger" idea that extended BELOW the robot frame and wheels years past, I have a question.

Is it legal to have a climbing mast and winch, were the mast would end up extending below the robot as well? Keeping in mind an overall height of 84 inches and the cylinder diameter of 54.

I read the rules and see I nothing against it.

Thanks, and good luck to all.

Troy

Except possibly the BUMPER ZONE rules... Once the mast goes below the robot, that is now the "bottom" of the robot... R25

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

Except possibly the BUMPER ZONE rules... Once the mast goes below the robot, that is now the "bottom" of the robot... R25

I don't believe the mast underneath would count as "standing normally", but this might warrant a Q&A question.

[eedoga]

I feel everyone's pain. Our team uses community voting to choose which design we are going to build, and the community overwhelmingly selected the robot that climbs the pyramid...We have run into one nightmare after another each which required an almost complete redesign. Our current solution will hopefully work, but it counts on a number of subsystems working relatively perfectly so that the whole thing doesn't just bind up.

The new perimeter constraints coupled with the high level of complexity in our design men we are pushing the limits on what our team is capable of on a number of different levels.

Here is to having it all come together.

Edoga

[mikegrundvig]

I believe we have a design that can climb the pyramid reliably 100% of the time (baring mechanical breakdown). It's relatively simple but fabricating it to be reliable is certainly quite hard. Right now turning the mechanical design into something we can fabricate is the big concern. One thing that's proven essential to getting the design working is that we have to build the robot around it. This isn't a component that can simply bolt onto a basic chassis like we typically do.

-Mike

[danopia]

Originally Posted by Leav

I am constantly thinking of the 2010 climbing challenge where I completely missed the "simple" grab&twist solution

You're starting to give me another idea, and I'm pretty sure that I already had a workable one to begin with

For Sure, I feel your pain. Every feasible idea has had a road block at this point. We have some reasonable ideas involving gripping but are unsure if damaging paint would be a foul. Most of the ideas we have had might be relatively simple for some veteran teams, but multiple moving arms possibly involving encoders and limit switches might not be where we are at this year. Also in a post competitve life, throwing the frisbee will be cool for demo's and such, the climber will never be seen again.

[FrankJ]

A fall from zone 3 will pretty much end your robots day. I don't really see the risk/reward as worth it. It will be interesting to see somebodies creative solution to this.

[ttldomination]

I don't think you're alone in your frustration.

I know some teams have the option to simply go for the 10 point hang. If you are confident in your abilities to run and gun, then the 10 point hang can be done in a matter of seconds. Why overcomplicate the process?

My team has 2-3 designs, none of which make me sleep easier at night. So, when we're facing this, the only thing to do is to go down these paths and see what the designs yield.

We're hoping that we'll yield nice, quick solutions, but for now, all we can do is hope.

- Sunny G.

[SciBorg Dave]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

A fall from zone 3 will pretty much end your robots day. I don't really see the risk/reward as worth it. It will be interesting to see somebodies creative solution to this.

We have an idea but is it worth the weight and possible fall.
We may just do a 10 easy or 20 hard over a 30 very hard and a lot of weight

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by danopia

For those of you that have ideas for a 30-point climb, would your robot be able to scale to a pyramid of, say, 10 levels without nontrivial changes? Ignore your robot hanging 30 feet in the air.

It seems like some postings I've seen would because it's repetitive, and others have like a full dance routine going on that lands perfectly on top and wouldn't work for any other pyramid.

Originally Posted by FrankJ

A fall from zone 3 will pretty much end your robots day. I don't really see the risk/reward as worth it. It will be interesting to see somebodies creative solution to this.

Partly for that reason, and partly for added stability, our design is basically doubled on each level. Grabbing twice instead of one per level should prevent any catastrophic failures!

[swwrobotics]

Originally Posted by Leav

I am constantly thinking of the 2010 climbing challenge where I completely missed the "simple" grab&twist solution, and can't shake the feeling that I'm missing a similar one here.

Good luck and may the force be with you.

-Leav

Sorry, but what was the simple grab and twist solution in 2010? My first year was part of the 2011 season so I was just a little curious.

Also, my team has come up with an idea, but early prototyping has shown that balance is pretty important when climbing, otherwise the robot cannot reach to the next level. We'd also like a simpler design than we have now just because we see a lot of things that can already go wrong with our current design.

[danopia]

For those of you that have ideas for a 30-point climb, would your robot be able to scale to a pyramid of, say, 10 levels without nontrivial changes? Ignore your robot hanging 30 feet in the air.

It seems like some postings I've seen would because it's repetitive, and others have like a full dance routine going on that lands perfectly on top and wouldn't work for any other pyramid.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by danopia

For those of you that have ideas for a 30-point climb, would your robot be able to scale to a pyramid of, say, 10 levels without nontrivial changes? Ignore your robot hanging 30 feet in the air.

It seems like some postings I've seen would because it's repetitive, and others have like a full dance routine going on that lands perfectly on top and wouldn't work for any other pyramid.

Our design is a basic extension of what we did in 2010 - same basic concept, but double the level of complexity to get to the third level. In fact, the level of complexity to go from 2 to 3 is actually less than that required to go from 1 to 2 with this design!

As for adding levels... the changes wouldn't be non-trivial, but they would be direct and obvious. Of course, to go 10 levels we would need a much bigger frame perimeter There's an alternate concept that branched off from this one that would allow us to tackle any number of levels successfully - basically the same design with a few added tweaks that amount to a lot of control complexity. But limiting to 3 levels proved much easier in the design.