Hi CD. My team is planning to climb in the center of the rung and allow other robots to hook onto a buddy bar on our frame. I’ve seen a few robot designs that use two widely-spaced hooks (here, here, here, & here). For buddy bar design purposes, about how far apart will your hooks be?
Most of the teams with widely-spaced hooks likely will want to hang directly, as the point of wide spaced hooks is already to assist in the balance.
Also, for buddies’ planning purposes, what will be the vertical separation between the rung and the buddy bar?
We technically have one climber attachment point but it touches the bar in two places.
Our plan isn’t a hook per se, but there will only be one of them. (doing a wheel to roll uphill and balance the bar)
That’s us but two wheels for center climb if necessary.
The stuff introduced in that referenced string about a curved hook is cool. But it also mentions two hooks shifting the weight of your robot farther out or closer in on a not-level coat hanger automatically… something I hadn’t considered. An excellent benefit for robots with two hooks that are wide apart.
Which leads me to want to open a discussion of an “active” way to balance using two wide-apart hooks that are under control of your robot, separately.
Would I be able to level the coat-hanger if I put two separate hooks and winch motors on my 'bot? Try to level the bar by carrying more of my weight on one vs. the other?
I get a nightmare-flashback to differential equations class 30 years ago, but clearly, as soon as your team mate has climbed and stopped shifting, I think it’s highly likely that I could carry more or less weight on my right arm or my left arm and level the balance.
But I don’t have any idea how much damping is in this system and how much swinging back-and-forth will be involved for our robot and our hanging teammate and our coat-hanger. Do any of you have a good guess as to whether this will work? It seems that the swing-pendulum period (rate) of robots would need to be compared too.
And since the measurement is five seconds after the match, do they think that swinging will be over by then? Will there need to be an official photo-finish at five seconds?
Also want to point out, any robots that want to hang in the middle, seems like you’ve forced your team to hang three robots to get the RP because it seems unlikely you’ll get the coat hanger level with two. Unless you have a centerline-buddy climb mechanism.
First, I think it is definitely possible to shift your CoG if you have two hooks. If they’re just ropes you would be able to move your CoG to beneath either of the hooks, or somewhere in between. If both hooks are rigidly attached, you have the option of pushing with one and pulling with the other (if the hooks stick to the rung) to shift past either hook. However, if you have your CoG centered and you hang just barely off the ground (2-3in) and your two hooks are rigidly attached to your robot through a stiff material (C channel or something), you make it much harder for another robot to upset the level of the switch. If you center yourself and hook on to the rung with both hooks and they can’t come off (a latch of some sort) you can almost guarantee a level scale if your alliance members climb on opposite sides.
Secondly, I will add that when reading your post it took me a while to realize what you meant by “coat hanger.” Might be just me, but I would consider trying to use actual game terminology when online.
Thanks everyone for all the votes and replies! This is great info!
We’re planning our vertical separation to be about 6-8", so both short and tall robots could use the buddy bar.
Judging from what we saw in the field tour video, the rung seems like it will swing back and forth for a while before balancing, especially if robots don’t climb at the same time. This is why we’re trying for the center buddy climb.
No option for 10.05" ?!
Haha, there’s always one…
For whatever reason, CD didn’t like when I tried to use the > symbol in the poll.
Welcome to HTML formatting.
I don’t see any benefit to this unless your hooks engage in a way that you can push up on the rung as well. With both hooks at the same altitude compared you your robot being level, as soon as your robot CoG passes beyond the vertical lines below one of your hooks, that hook will rise up off the rung anyway. And if you pull that high hook down and let the low hook up, you’re moving farther away from the balance point.
Possibly there’s some dynamic benefit, but I’m not seeing it.
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