My teams came up with an idea and are still building the minibot and well, we sorta overlooked a key element… Deployment!! So I’m curious what everyone else has thought of or even created!! What do You and your team think?
Thanks in advance!
My team is going to be using the kind of slider that you have on your garbage can that goes in a cabinet. It works really smoothly and we are thinking of pairing it up with a scissors-type mechanism propelled by a pneumatic cylinder.
We are using a set of sliders, similar to the ones used on keyboard slidey trays, pushed out by two pneumatic cylinders.
They arent as smooth as we would like, but oh well, they are already bolted to the robot. Plus, we have plenty of grease…
Ah nice! thank You for the Reply! Our team thought about using a pneumatic cylinder for that too, however we’ve already got two being used, one to raise our arm and the other for the grabber at the end… and with using a single small compresser, we dont really want to use any more cylinders. We’re using the largest cylinder that Bimba makes! i think its like 2 feet long nearly! lol Thank You again for sharing!
Lol very nice as well! It doesnt always have to be exactly smooth as long as it gets the job done right? lol We learned last year with a kicker idea that grease always helps! Thank you very much for your reply!
Out deployer uses 2 pistons, one to push the deployer out, the other to deploy the minibot. We have prototyping videos (only using the deployer) on my youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/klmx30302 I would post individual links but I have 10+ vids of deployer testing.
Hmmmmmm! Interesting, very nice indeed! thank you for the reply! im going through the videos now! thank u for sharing!
There has been some buzz about trying to standardize minibot deployment so that teams can get points for “coopertition” by lending their minibots to other teams. Deployment standardization would permit this to happen more easily.
http://www.youtube.com/user/klmx30302?feature=mhum#p/u/9/b5Wf1COZ9Js
I like this one! thank you so very much for the ideas! not trying to be a thief or anything! lol 
but i really am impressed by your deployer! thanks again
My team’s arm is raised using a winch powered by a motor, so we will use three pneumatic cylinders- a tiny one for the grabber, a small/medium sized one for the minibot deployment system and a medium sized one to push our forklift past the bumpers (check out this post http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=90804 ). We do have quite a few small air tanks on or robot- we’ll really be pushing the weight limit. My team got that huge Bimba one as well. We were thinking of using it for the minibot deployment because it was so long, but it was way to big, heavy, and inefficient.
Hmmm nice forklift! not to sound dumb… but do u have some kind of grabber on the end of it to retrieve the tubes?
That would be really smart wouldn’t it? it would be sorta interchangeable am i correct? that way more than one type of minibot could be deployed from a single deployer? Rather ingenious!! 
Yeah! hey me and a friend were talking on FB a second ago and he had an idea… What if our team used 2 compressors? What if we used 2 completely separate systems for the Bimbas? one for the large bimba then another for all the rest of the smaller ones?
I apologize for the tardiness of my posts… for some odd reason the last two I’ve posted, it popped up and said that they would be posted as soon as a moderator had approved them.I’m Confused!
i believe what we intend to do is push the robot out, and then rotate the whole robot with the minibot on the end into the pole, that way the most power full motors, in a relatively ideal setup, will deploy the robot.
Are you using a storage tank(s) in addition to the compressor? While the new compressor is physically smaller than previous years it’s performance is actually higher. Here is the spec sheet for the legal compressor family. VIAIR® Corporation – 12-Volt & 24-Volt Air Compressors and Tire Inflators | Your Vital Air Source
Oh thats cool! different from others I’ve heard! So your arm deploys it? Thank you for the reply! Good Luck!
To all: Can the minibot change shape? We are using the battery to swing down.
As it climbs the pole. Gravity takes over. Keeping the wheels cocked onto the pole.
Thank You, Mentor Mac Team 686I see no rule that prohibits a minibot from changing shape, However <R91> must be complied with at all times
<R91> The MINIBOT may not exceed a 12” x 12” x 12” volume and weigh no more than 15 lbs.
Here is a quick video that shows my team’s deployment system.
We still need to cut a channel in the Plexiglass for the pole and we need to figure out how the minibot will attach to the plate, but the core of the system is there. We used a pneumatic cylinder and a 4-joint scissor lift with the sliders. The mechanism goes from 0 (totally inside the robot’s perimeter) to 22 inches (touching the pole) in about 1.4 seconds. The maximum extension, like I said, is 22 inches, which gives us some space for the channel and for alignment error.