Title says it - what are some really creative, outside-the-box climbers this year?
Ones I’ve seen that are really different / unique:
4907 Thunderstamps jump climb
2481 Roboteers driving up the truss
2405 Techno Trojans with their dorito climber
I’m sure there are many other unique ones…
I very much hope this pun was intentional 
2826 Wave also reacts against the back of the truss. Arguably a cleaner climb than 2481.
I think ours is pretty cool, uses alot of the same motions as most other teams but our mechanisms look quite unique.
2485 has a very nice ski lift that’s just so fun to watch in action.
The skip-high-bar climbers are pretty out-of-the-box IMO.
125 and 3310 have different designs that leverage off the high bar to swing hooks up to traversal.
1690, 254, 2337 and maybe others don’t interact with the high bar at all and instead leverage off the truss.
Another different one from here in NC is 587 Hedgehogs’ rack climber:
604 has a cool climb:
1914 and 1923 have their quick and repeatable high bar climbs.
Going to do a full write up before Houston, but here’s a decent video of 6421’s climber. Extending arms bring the bar into a set of locking hooks mounted to the robot.
Very cool. I think 2609 Beaverworx made something similar:
https://youtu.be/R8vfTyAxTm0?t=124
4338’s climb. Wish I had a video to share.
I’m going to put a vote in for 341. Lots of teams have been doing the, “Windmill,” climb, but I have yet to see another team with such a cool latching mechanism as them. They built a gear into the finger and rotate the entire latch around the bar so there is no way for them to fall off if the sequence is correct.
Check it out here:
Here is a quick snapshot:
I was lucky enough to see it in person, but maybe @Karibou or @MissDaisyGirl could comment or share some CAD screenshots.
I loved seeing 5914’s rotating hexagon climber at the Iowa regional!
I don’t feel like we have a super creative climber but we did get the creativity award at both of our competitions. It uses a modified climber in a box, different hooks rotation at the bottom and a 2nd wench and spring to control the rotation. This allows us to reliably control our center of gravity and decrease the swinging. (Team 5492) allthough some of that award had to do with our fold out electrical box.
Actually, we also react off of the high rung instead of the truss. Our Blue Alliance photo has the truss reaction bar, but we couldn’t get our claws to latch fully, so we switched, partially inspired by 3310 as well I believe. Instead we use fiberglass poles that bend on the high rung and react us into the right angle to connect with our claws.
You can see them climbing here on blue
4338 and 4590 both had similar designs, and I can personally say they were both a treat to watch up close
