Climbing this year is quite significant if you want to win a match. With that said, having 3 robots successfully on the generator switch will be a winning factor in Play-Offs and Champs. Fortunately we hope that without stop build date at least 8/10 robots at every regional will be able to climb. Still, there will be those who wont be able to do climb or their climber takes too long. The next challenge is keeping all 3 robots leveled, which adds 15 points. Being able to lift two robots with your robot has been a headache I’ve had since Kick Off. Obviously my go to answer was just do what 148 did on 2018 and put two of those and the side of our robot(A very neat mechanism you should check out on Youtube). The unfortunate part is that there is a lot of issues with going with a mechanism like that, one being that not all robots will have bumpers mounted firmly or the other robots may not leave a “gap” to grab them. So what do you do now? you only have 12 inches minus the bumper width to work with?
This is where a cheesecake solution came into play. I figured it would be the most effective and easiest solution, but I don’t know if other teams would be willing to go along with the idea.
The essential idea I have is that our robot would have hooks that actuate out and grab our alliance robots from a bar or something similar to lift 3 robots from the center of the generator switch, allowing us to be level.
The question is whether you guys think this is even a viable solution? I know there are issues with this idea too, but I think it’s a better option that a bumper lift.
It’s just a thought I wanted to share and see what other teams think, feel free to leave your thoughts below.
This is walking an even finer line than the robowrangler velcro strap from 2018 would be with this year’s “cheesecaking rules”. You’d likely find yourself taking a lot of careful steps around other teams and inspectors in both action and verbiage.
I like i the Triple Climb interface 30 minute idea to share with a team , and as long as the other team builds it themselves… seems like a winner. I also think its successful use will be very rare, climbing is hard in games it does work nice swing of at least +15… the interfacing lining up+ short throw seems problematic to do in a short time frame with two other bots and needing to interface twice with unknown driver ability
Did you watch Power UP? That was not close 80% and that was a stable bar with tall bots allowed and 30 points, buddy climbs exceedingly rare.
Climbing is not a trivial ability. We did climb +90% others not so much and that was one of my scouting years watching everyone
Our team discussed the possibility that other teams would to a triple climber. When a student brought up that platforms (like 1678) might be precarious, others reminded them of the back-of-the-robot rungs we saw in 2018. Essentially, you climb and let second/third robot climb on you later, once you secure/lock your climber mech.
But I’m sure we’ll see something like your idea in events… maybe even week 1 events (cough… LA North… cough)
The difficulty will be finding robots with a structure suitable for easily adding the bar. If it fails structurally, the consequences can be rather severe so a team with a suitable robot might still not want to try it.
I also feel that one robot lifting a total of three is going to require a heavy duty climbing mechanism. I personally do not think that this is going to be worth it, especially later, as more teams that can climb individually will have a higher chance of advancing.
In previous years, I recall seeing triple climb attempts in the past where one of the two robots getting a ride did not get on properly and no robot got any climb points. This is probably a lower risk at the District or World Champs but at Regionals and District Events…
What about having a passive bar on your robot that other robots can grab and then climb. You climb, deploy a bar (or 2) that is the same size and same height as the switch, then other robots can grab it and climb. There are obvious drawbacks but it seems having one robot secured in the center of the switch would make balancing easier than the other robot/s trying to figure out where to grab the switch so as to balance. Visibility of the switch is challenging for 2 alliance partners, only one gets a side view.
I’m not an engineer so please be kind as you shred this idea?
Just want to quickly note here that the robot wrangler doesn’t grab bumpers. It slides a plate under the robot and grabs a velcro strap attached to the chassis rail.
If all you’re doing is giving your alliance members some “interface specs” (Height, depth from the bumpers, diameter of tubing) and letting them source the parts/figure out how to integrate it into the robot, I think it passes I1, and it’s not really cheesecaking as we’ve understood it in the past.
If, on the other hand, you actually cheesecake them (for example, give them a mechanism designed to bolt onto a standard kitbot chassis that includes a climbing bar at the location you want it in order to enable them to get climbing points), that would be against I1.
It’s a fine line to draw. This sort of cooperation between teams is a worthy goal, but it’s something that has seen a lot more failures to implement than success in the past.
Meaning I’ve seen a TON of proposed buddy climb systems in past years that all boil down to “just put a bar on your robot”. I can only think of 1 robot I’ve seen in person with such a bar on it, and can count on one hand the number of times I saw it used. The velcro strap buddy climb was the only one I’ve ever seen implemented as cheesecake (ignoring solo-climb cheesecake for Steamworks here… that’s a different discussion!). Not much traction in the past on getting people to buy into such a system.
Cheesecaking may might be illegal, but I could see teams giving out “recipe” books. Plans for very simple static mechanism that allows others to climb with them. These mechanisms would have to be made with parts that the most teams would have access to.
I should add though, unless you’re the Betty Crocker of robotics, don’t count on tons of people using your recipes.
I think another idea is much more likely than pre-event plans distirbuted to teams to build cheesecake interfaces. It is designing your mechanism to interface with COTS components you can give to a team and leave to the team to figure out how to mount.
Say you have a hook designed to interface to a particular tube. You give this unmodified, COTS tube to a partner, and essentially say “if this bar is on your robot, we can grab onto it and carry you up. How can we figure out how to mount it with the parts and structure you already have?” This doesn’t break the cheesecaking rules, as it is a single piece of raw material you are working together on-the-fly to figure out how to integrate, but it allows you to get a particular feature installed on a partner robot to assist with a buddy climb.
Who knows if we will see this? But it could absolutely happen. 148 was already pretty much there with their Robot Wrangler strap concept.
Examples of MAJOR MECHANISMS include, but are not limited to, assemblies listed be low:
a. an assembly used to manipulate a game piece
b. an assembly used to position a ROBOT for an end game task
It truly depends upon how those words are interpreted. A triple climb is always impressive (even if the alliance loses the match).
