177 toying with how to manipulate the 2008 track ball. No one is actually touching the ball. The people behing it are proping the mechanism.
I knew it! When I started thinking about great large-ball robots this one immediately came to mind.
177’s amazing 2001 robot that can do endo’s while half inside/half outside the field ftw! lol 
Suction device?
Nope. Not quite.
If it’s the same 2001 robot I think it is:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/12347
Although… it could be their 2003 as well.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/14980
But definitely not their 2004 robot:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/17725
We couldn’t resist trying it when we saw the game. We still have a few other manipulators to try out. 
looks to me like two wheels inwards sucking, the cloth is pulled tight so it would make sense if it was pinching it together
like 100’s claw last year
With the ball that close to the ceiling there doesn’t seem to be much space left between the bottom of the ball and the floor. Or it just the way I’m looking at it? That’s a cool photo.
Just the angle. It’s more than 3 ft off the floor and about 1.5-2 ft below the ceiling. The location of the light in the background (actually about 5 ft behind the ball) makes it look closer to the ceiling.
the only reason y’all finished really fast is because all you did was to barely modify last year’s robot.
right?
It’s much older than that, and it’s not modified.
… That is part of experience. You have a better chance of knowing what might work and what might not if you’ve been around a little. A lot of times certain parts of an older robot work as the perfect prototype whether it be its base or a part of its upper body. Also you will not see them with the same robot at competition because due to the rules they did no fabricate the robot within the 6 week build period so they will be making another one and just because they are doing that they will probably improve their design to better fit this game.
That is definitely the 2001 Bobcat, unless you guys put the yellow panels on Petunia just to throw people off. The first thing I thought of after I read the game description was a practice match at Nationals in 2001 where our drivers dropped one of the big balls over the rail that divided the field and then drove the bot under the rail after it.
I can’t be sure, but from the picture, it looks like the grasper is not reaching halfway around the ball. Wouldn’t that make it prone to popping out?
That claw was designed so that it could grab either a big ball or one of the mobile goals. As a result, it only reached a little more than halfway around the balls. But it was still able to hold the balls well enough (especially since 2001 was 4 vs 0, so there was no defense to worry about).
or perhaps it’s being held up magically by the zipper :rolleyes:
What is powering the claw? a piston or a smaller motor? I am guessing it has to pivoting sections for the claw but what is causing the close/ope action?