I know that earlier in the season, there was some talk about teams doing buddy climbs. Did your team actually pursue this plan? How did it go?
I was legit going to post this same topic. 
The way we plan to do it is to drop a bar down similar to what 4613 did on their 2018 robot. Then attach a hook to our alliance partners bot and have them pull up next to us with their hook over our bar. We only have CAD drawings at this point, but we think we can get it done.
I would love to see if someone has designed a buddy clime that does not involve attaching something to your alliance partners bot or grabbing them by the bumper.
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We have something, we think it’ll work, we’ll only find the answer on the field in 2 weeks. Stay tuned for our reveal video in the next days
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The real problem with buddy climbs this year is that they’re being done on a (main) bar that moves. Most of the really effective methods involve dropping out buddy bars from the frame or climbing mechanism of a robot. But that only moves the problem of balance. Having a robot hang off the side of your robot, even if you’re centered, isn’t going to make it all that much easier to balance than if they hung on their own. Have one hang off each side is no more or less good than three hanging on their own.
That leaves the really obvious solution of a buddy bar centered on the underside of the robot, so that you can take advantage of the center hang position with two robots at once. This certainly solves the balance problem neatly, but it has another problem all it’s own. With the center (level) bar position being only 63" off the floor, there’s just not much room under a hanging robot to spare. Even a trench robot at only (as ours is) 27" tall limits the room under it to 36" and that’s without taking into account the robot’s own climbing gear at the top and whatever space the buddy bar might need underneath. It’s just barely possible that this could be done, but only in very specific circumstance, such as both robots being short and having the correct kinds of climbing mechanisms to match up and lift variable distances.
It’s not that it can’t be done, but it’s my take that it won’t be very practical this year and we’ll see very few buddy climbs in actual competition. The climbing challenge simply isn’t designed for it.
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You may have problems with this for a couple of reasons. First, it may be ruled illegal because of the “no cheesecaking” rules in this years manual, which did not exist in 2018. Adding that hook that you built to your partner’s robot may be ruled as adding a “major mechanism” since it has the purpose of fully meeting a game challenge. I’m not saying it is illegal, but don’t depend on it being legal either.
The second reason is that the climbing conditions are different and it may not behave the same way as the Redback’s mechanism did in 2018. Then, there was a wall on one side of the robot providing resistance to the imbalancing force of having the robot hanging off the side (you’ll notice that their robot had a pair of wheels that specifically interfaced the wall to provide stability on the climb.) In the free-climb situation of this year, there’s nothing to keep the robot from swinging freely in relation to the change of it’s CoG, which may present problems especially with a heavier partner robot. The forces on the mechanism will be very interesting, especially sideways, and may throw off balance or even torque the mechanism in unfortunate ways or (if the bar is parallel to the climbing bar) cause you to violate frame perimeter. As with my comment above, I’m not saying it won’t work, but the issues involved are not trivial.
We pursued it. It works mechanically for another full weight robot to sit under ours, and for ours to lift it. We have not gotten far enough in our programming to set it up, and depending on how things go this next week we might have it for our week two event, or we may not.
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Some parts of the bar move a lot more than other parts. I think most buddy climb attempts will be designed to straddle the middle of the bar, which has a consistent height and prevents sliding too much either way due to the vertical beam in the middle.
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My imagination doesn’t work very well for this stuff. I need to see sketches.
I also haven’t seen any “specs” for any teams’ proposed buddy climbs, as far as the size, capabilities, location of attaching points, etc on the second robot.
AFAIK buddy climb is vaporware…but I also expect to see just a few amazing ways to do this with any other robot(s).
Our team has been totally ignoring buddy climb, instead concentrating on making ours work well in single hang, and (hopefully) hanging next to another robot that is independent of ours, but can hook and hang at the same time.
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We are in the same boat. When we fully climb we have 46 inches under our bot. Our “helicopter sling” will be able to hold another bot and lift it with us, but the programming to drop the platform isn’t ready yet, and probably won’t be by Week 1.
Maybe by our week 4 competition we will have it going (depending on how Week 1 goes).
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No way! This was my original idea too! Haven’t had much time to prototype yet though so we will have to see.
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Buddy climb is alive and well on this side of the country
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This is the approach most teams should be taking in my opinion.
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Our buddy climb is still in assembly phase, but I’m optimistic we might have the components together on the robot so I can share photos after this weekend. We explored forks, buddy bar, and gripping bumpers of alliance partners, but ultimately settled on a system that drops a flat cargo net/platform out below our robot to lift straight upwards when we climb. Perhaps like the “helicopter sling” mentioned above?
In principle, should be able to lift robots that are around the 28" height without attaching anything to them/utilizing their own climb mech. We don’t compete until week 5, and expect this is the type of system that would be primarily beneficial in quals, less likely to be used in elims. Getting our robot to successfully single climb was much higher on the priority list (top of the list), but the buddy climb seemed like a fun challenge to explore.
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Yes, we indeed have a lot of things to work out, but if we decide to pursue it, I believe we can get it done in six weeks for rocket city regional.
Here’s the thing, unless your a top tier team like 254, 1678, etc., you can’t grantee that you can RP from completing stage three. The average team will not be able to solo it and will have to rely on their alliance partners to help get that RP. However, if you can buddy clime (ether lift one bot and balance or lift both your alliance partners), you will be able to get the endgame RP almost every match. So is it extremely challenging this year? “Yes!” But is it worth it? Assuming you have a decent shooter and cycle time, “Absolutely!” So I think well see quite a few this season.
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Wow! We figured out how to do 37" but that’s it. I hope I get to see yours.
Me too. That means we both made it to Houston!!
I know of a few buddy climbs being built, but for the most part I don’t expect them to be practical in-match. We looked at it early on and threw it away almost immediately. The climbing challenge this year is not that difficult and I expect many teams to be capable of climbing. It made sense in 2018 and 19 because there was limited climbing space available in both games. In 20, there’s plenty of room for multiple robots.
My bet is that no more than a dozen teams in the world will make regular use of a buddy climb for genuine competitive advantage.
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This is true, but even using the central position may be thrown off balance by adding a lot of weight to one side of the robot. The same goes for the tilt of the robot itself if the other robot is front or back, which won’t be a balance problem but may be a problem for the climbing mechanism due to lateral force (or for frame perimeter if it isn’t a rigid mechanism.)
So your robot, at the height of its climb, is only 17" tall including the mechanism? I know some teams are really dedicated to building low-bots, but wow!
A portion of their robot is 17" tall. The whole thing doesn’t need to be that short for a climb like that to work.