What are Teams Thinking for Multi-Climbs

[bmammen]

That’s what a lot of people thought in 2010. However, few teams actually did, and AFAIK one was only ever used once. That said, the incentive to use one was very low, unlike this year.

Keep in mind that if you add a bar, you need to be sure your climber is strong enough to hang another robot plus some impulse force when latching. If using the bar breaks your climber, you just turned 30 points in to 0 plus a broken climber.

I would also add that if you fall you will be very unpopular with the team who’s robot you decimate below you.

[JohnFogarty]

That’s a really good design question. Also, if you have two partners of vastly different weights, can you climb with the iron cross?

I don’t envy teams trying for it.

With the right sensors and independently controlled winches instead of just the one we used on the Ri3D build. We think it is possible.

I definitely think if a team is going to try to build the “iron cross” that it needs to have some serious over-engineering. I definitely wouldn’t want to be the team responsible for dropping another team’s robot. We did serious stress analysis in Creo to determine if the idea was even viable before we ever cut a single piece of material.

[Keefe2471]

Teams attempting to balance only one robot without a counter weight do have the Tower itself to brace on, or at least the two inch lip as shown in Figure 3-10 of the game manual.

Image of the lip is attached. (Not sure how to show it in the post without uploading my snip to imgur or something).

[JohnFogarty]

Also locking your hooks into the bar would potentially solve the tilting problem too with only one robot on the “iron cross” or as I call it…the “robot elevator”

[ratdude747]

That’s a really good design question. Also, if you have two partners of vastly different weights, can you climb with the iron cross?

I don’t envy teams trying for it.

Perhaps one could additionally brace under the extension part of the rung for side support, or else latch around the bar and have some sort of quick release for removal post-match. The issue I see is tipping, which is why a passive (gravity-reliant) open hook isn’t likely to be reliable for said iron cross. Having support both over and under at 2 or more points will help alleviate that.

I think it’s doable, and at higher levels of play I think will be a game changer, especially if scoring gets to the point of power cubes being a scarce resource. Time will tell, and I look forward to see if anybody tries it.

[Brian_M1]

We have a ramp on top of our robot that another robot climbs on top of. Then we use 500 pneumatic pistons that all fire at once. We throw the other robot into the bar and they might catch the bar. If not, too bad. Then we put a huge stick inside our partner’s robot and use that to lift us up. Our backup plan is that when there is one second left, we fire all 1000 of our pneumatic pistons on the base that point downwards. They instantly retract back giving us a huge hop up. So that way, when the match ends, we were technically above 12 inches.

I think you are slightly forgetting you cant push downwards with pistons or else your bumpers will violate the 2.5" height restriction! Other than that, its a solid strat.

[DanielPlotas]

I think you are slightly forgetting you cant push downwards with pistons or else your bumpers will violate the 2.5" height restriction! Other than that, its a solid strat.

WOOOSH

[Brian_M1]

WOOOSH

Actually, you just got WHOOOOSHED