Hello everyone. I was wondering how your team is going to pickup the robot after a match on the terrain’s floor carpet. Is there a specific procedure that you guys will do or are you just going to pick it . Thank you very much and have a good day.
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Something like this…
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In the past, we have had metal loops in our chassis that the drive team can hook straps onto in order to life the robot.
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Lifting straps with carabiners on the end, and 4 of these spaced around the robot.
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Same with our team as the above answers. You can use all kinds of things for the lifting straps. We use these velcro hanging straps that come with swivels and carabiners. We cut lengths of 1" PVC pipe and passed the straps through them to make solid handles. It makes for a good grip and easy lifting.
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Handles integrated into the frame of the robot. McMaster-Carr
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We are doing similar but without the Eye Hooks. We have cutouts in barstock attached to the baseplate for the carabineers to clip through.
This is from a different plate version but you can get the idea. There’s the circle for the clip or the oval holes to grab it from if need be
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We use what we lovingly call “meat hooks”. They are Al hooks on a t-handle that we can lock into the frame for lifting. The robot.
We have been using this system for ~15 years, but I’ve honestly lost track it’s been so long.
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Instead of integrated hooks or handles, which we tried last season, we plan to lift by our bumpers. They’re mounted directly to our 2x1 1/8 wall chassis bars with eight 3/8-16 bolts and 1x1 1/8 wall aluminum extrusion on the backing wood. Our lifting strategy is to lift by the backing wood, while reaching under the pool noodles, which we’ve found to be very stiff with this mounting system.
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I would caution against lifting by the bumpers - I’ve seen bumpers detach from a robot all too often to trust it, regardless of how well attached they are. Bolts pull through the wood, or someone doesn’t secure them properly (since they ARE designed to be removable!), and then you’re dropping the robot - usually with the other side still being held, so the robot tips and falls on the unfortunate student left holding a bumper.
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That’s entirely dependent on bumper quality and attachment methods. I have total confidence in lifting my bot by its bumpers, but we use baltic birch bumper frames, redundant bolts and treaded inserts attaching brackets, hundreds of staples in the fabric, and mounting clips or bolts that are either on and easily capable of holding the robots weight or off and bumpers will come off with the robot still on the ground.
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Hey if your bumpers are attached by dropping the robot into the bumpers and not bumpers over robot, you could take advantage of the bumper extrusion rule and it’ll be pretty hard for the robot to fall through your bumpers when lifted
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I second the concern regarding lifting by the bumpers. I’ve seen our students do this on our practice field and the shape and slipperiness of the bottom of the bumper and fabric makes a questionable hold at best. The tip-over @Jon_Stratis mentioned has happened. Add students walking sideways/backwards and negotiating the gate, field pieces, game pieces and other teams… 
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Our robot’s going to be pretty light this year, and as such we didn’t feel the need to add any extra mechanisms to assist lifting the robot. Our frame of the robot (the bars holding the swerves) is our main way of lifting it, get your hands under, count down 3,2,1, and bring it to the cart
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If you design for it bumpers are a pretty reliable handle in my experience. Now, there are a lot of mounting schemas where lifting from the bumpers is not a great idea.
Personally I am not a huge fan of the clip on carabineer handles or the “meathook” style as you are suspending the robot from 3-4 pints, generally low on the frame, there is a lot less feedback and control vs just grabbing the frame and super structure.
But teams have been using the carabineer and meat hook styles for years with incidents no more common than bumpers or frame grabbing, so this is just my personal feelings on lifting and controlling mass rather than any issue.
As far as I am concerned teams can ditch the elaborate carpenter tool belts. I get that it may be exciting to be the technician and you want to play up the role. If a half dozen zip ties, multi tool and the two most common hex keys won’t do the trick then your robot probably needs the pit anyway (or put all that extra stuff in a small box on the robot cart). You don’t need a 30’ tape measure, first aid kit, or anything like that. Those belts (or backpacks in some cases) have snagged on far more stuff than I have seen robot handling issues. Less is more.
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This is pretty much all they need. Good for in the pit for most quick fixes and all a technician should be allowed to do at the field unless its playoffs
We did the same thing with some straps from the hardware store that worked great, but we didn’t quite have enough clearance to our bumper wood so they’d occasionally catch and get stuck
If we can, we try and go with the carabiners, but in the worst case, find places on the robot that can be lifted from safely.
This year we both didn’t have space and weight for carabiners, so we wrapped electrical tape around our intake plates and used those as one set of handles, then the climber winch was used as the other handle most of the time.
Weight? All it took on our robot was a hole to put a caribeaner on and after the match we would attach it with out handle
Just with our hands.
We had eye-bolts and straps before, but we found out we hardly use it.
So we’ve been hand-lifting for the past 3 seasons