Would attaching both ends of the generator be against the rules? For example, the middle, vertical bar on the generator switch, would you be allowed to attach to the horizontal bars on either side of it? Or are you only allowed to attach to one side?
Rule book says nothing about how you climb in terms of sides
Thank you for the quick answer!
This answer isn’t as quick but it may be helpful - rule G26 states that you can’t attach to those horizontal bars, as they are not technically part of the “HANDLE”:
G26. Be careful what you interact with. ROBOTS and OPERATOR CONSOLES are prohibited from the following actions with regards to interaction with ARENA elements. Items A – C exclude POWER CELLS, HANDLE, and the ALLIANCE’S CONTROL PANEL. Item G excludes the HANDLE.
A. Grabbing
B. Grasping
C. Attaching (including the use of hook tape to anchor to the FIELD carpet and excluding use of the PLAYER STATION hook-and-loop tape, plugging in to the provided power outlet, and plugging the provided Ethernet cable into the OPERATOR CONSOLE)
D. Deforming
E. Becoming Entangled
F. Damaging
G. Suspending from
1 Like
I believe you are reading the rule incorrectly. The enumerated items A - G are things you can not do to most of the field. “Item G excludes the HANDLE” means in fact you can suspend from the handle.
However, you need to understand what makes up the HANDLE. The RUNG is the lower horizontal bar. The HANDLE comprises this plus the GREEN highlighted structure. The upper horizontal bar (parallel to the RUNG) is not part of the HANDLE. Thus G26 applies to it.
2 Likes
The hard part of the climb in my opinion will be keeping the robot in that position when it’s powered off.
1 Like
Do you mean maintaining the position on the rung or staying up off the floor. Depending on what method you are using to climb, you may be able to borrow solutions from previous games with climbing for staying up.
What I’m saying is staying up off of the floor once the power is cut from the robot.
Is it possible that we might see 118 reprise their 2012 bridge grappling mechanism? It seems likely it could be done legally this year. It appears at the end of their reveal video. One of the people seen lifting it off said the vertical rollers were to be powered so they could fine tune the balance.
1 Like
I don’t think they’re going to use that same grappling mechanism (They used it in 2016). When it worked, it worked really well, but it didn’t work 100% of the time. I believe they only successfully climbed in about 10% of their matches.
They only climbed in 12 matches I think.
Search through the forum for threads talking about climbing. Use the advanced feature to restrict the date range to a season like 2017 or 2018 to see what people did to solve that problem. What you learn may affect the climbing method you choose.
1 Like
I am referring to the mechanism they used only once to balance on the bridge (without being on the bridge surface) in 2012. A phone call was placed to FIRST HQ that evening and that mechanism was ruled illegal. 118 removed it and balanced like other robots after that.
I watched as the 118 team members described their 2016 grappling hook and it’s launching mechanical to the Judges (blue shirts). They went through quite a few iterations to get it competition ready.
1 Like
I think the best climber for middle resource teams (25th to 75th percentile of the FRC community, and perhaps higher and lower) will be to have a relatively light duty mechanism (whether arm or elevator or scissor or pneumatic or whatever) which raises their hook(s)/gripper(s) above the rung, then a more forceful winch which pulls the robot up to the hook(s). If you go this route and plan things so that the winch cable/cord is not spooled at the beginning of the match, your winch can have a built-in ratchet, whether a VP ratchet stage or a 1/2" ratchet wrench on a hex shaft or something else. Done.
You likely need some sort of locking/brake mechanism. If the climber has any shafts in it (mosts likely will) a simple 1/2 ratcheting wrench works very well. High enough gear ratio can have massive back drive resistance. The one advantage of this years game is you just need to be off the floor (as there is not specific minimum height requirement) from T=0 for 5 seconds. Just climbing higher and slowly backdriving will likely be enough for a shorter ROBOT.
We have gone with the ratchet solution for the last 3 climbers. Easy to mount, easy to remove, easy to replace if you break it. We tried some of the ratcheting gearboxes and exploded a couple, before we went back to the trusty 1/2" ratcheting box wrench. Only disadvantage is that you cannot lower the climber to adjust placement, or retry the climb.
The simplest system is likely hook and winch, with something to get the hook up to the RUNG.
And don’t forget a way to keep the robot in place after the robot gets powered off.
The ratchet accomplishes that
We have used a name brand 1/2 box wrench with one way ratchet end on a number of climbers, including one where we had a buddy bar with other ROBOTS climbing on us. We tested that one by having various large men hang from the buddy bar (subbing in for the second ROBOT). Never have had a ratchet fail.
The biggest disadvantage is that is a one way mechanism. Meaning you have to have your mechanism in the “out state” (winch line spooled out if you are using a winch) and do mechanism management on that and you only get one climb attempt. Depending on your attachment mechanism you may get multiple attachment attempts but once you activate the climber you can only “climb”.
For us, the strength and simplicity have made it an acceptable tradeoff. We really like AMSTEEL-Blue rope (non stretch, very high tensile strength) and a simple winch for climbers. The small rope diameter makes it fairly easy to manage (usually go with velcro tear away points for cable management).
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.