At the moment, I can only think of a few different ways to carry around caps: putting a claw on a lift, creating a U-shaped bracket that can slide underneath the flat side of the caps to act as a passive way to hold caps, and just pushing caps around with the robot.
What are some viable-sounding ways to carry around caps? I was thinking about a claw resembling a clamp, with two padded plates perpendicular to each other that could clasp together to secure a large surface area, though I have no clue how I would go about doing that.
I am personally going to go with a passive method. It would basically be the U shaped bracket you were talking about, except it would also have a U bracket on the top, so I can flip a cap without it falling off. I don’t think an active claw will be necessary, but a design that flips caps super fast might involve an active cap grabber.
Well the cat is out of the bag so the team I coach can’t get mad. They plan to prototyping a double-U cap sandwich (I think he said) once (school) finals are over.
I think a double U-bracket intake with a rotating pivot point on the “wrist” of the arm might be good. you could grab a cap passively, and turn it upside down while lifting it over to the posts, and then simply back out.
Yup, this is exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for putting it in words so well!
I wonder if it will be really good, or if other passive designs will dominate.
im thinking of a fork or a u shaped fork but i wouldn’t use an active flipping mechanism because you could most likely just use your intake and lift to flip the cap.