I was trying to think of a way to climb the endgame pole, and I was stuck because my original design had a pole cover that was retracted. But then I saw that you can’t touch the yellow cap and now I’m stuck. Does anybody else have other ideas?
Could you explain how you would passively clamp, please?
Those standoffs wil bend when its a 15-20 pound robot. But then again u can jusr stiffen it up with regular c channel. But i feel like it would slip with more weight
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All that was asked for ideas - this proof of concept is simple enough that the concept can be demonstrated and understood by pretty much anyone. Take load off arm, the mechanism slides off.
If you are going to take this approach, you would want to research this deeply and select materials for an optimized solution for your application. That is left as an exercise for the reader.
This is what student-centered looks like 
If I have time, might make a quick testbot using EXP kit
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Passive in the sense that there is no motors or pneumatics to clamp to poll, gravity is only force at play. Remove the load from the arm, and the mechanism will slide off.
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@TimmyOsborne Do you think that this might be a good option, if we could make it out of 5.5W motors?
(watch the video)
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I have seen the pole climbing robots and they look pretty promining. My concer with using 1 5.5wat motor is that you might not have enoughf torque especially since 1 5.5w motor has less than half the torque of a 11w motor. Now if you geared it down alot and mabey used a ratchet or a worm gear to keep it from back spinning then it might work but it would probabbly be a very slow climb
“slow and steady wins the race” …
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I had a strategy for Endgame where you drove up the Elevation bar. Using 3 sets of wheels on the interior of the robot and an empty opening in the front, you could just drive up the Elevation bar. However you would have to use Omni wheels so you could rotate to avoid the part of The elevation bar the attaches to the feild barrier, you also would have to have some way to wedge yourself up and above the short barrier to center yourself on the bar.
Pros-
- Robot could have a higher weight compared to some other designs
- Not that hard to figure out how to make it function
- Very Adjustable to how heavy your robot is
Cons-
- Would take several motors off your watt limit, depending on how heavy your robot was
- Would take up a large amount of room in the center of your robot
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It’s almost as if the GDC’s inclusion of SG11 foresaw robots slowly climbing up.
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I believe flex wheels would probably work better for this.
Yes, I know;
This shouldn’t be an issue with flex wheels as long as you rotate around the pole while it climbs; the robot is moving vertically at the same time as it is rotating horizontally. I don’t think flex wheels would prevent the robot from rotating.
I do think that omni wheels wouldn’t have enough grip (if they are in the location they are in the drawing).
You could probably make omni wheels work just fine if you used some type of torque induced friction mechanism. Here are two examples:
- Example 1:
- Example 2:
Specifically the bit about the video in the first post.
Let’s distil this all down. Whatever mechanism you use, there will be a downward force of weight and there has to be another force that is equal and acts upwards. That is because it has to be at equilibrium to not slide down. As you may know, we cannot use normal contact force since the yellow cap is off limits at the end, unless you find a way to remove some mechanism which is put onto the yellow cap. However, we still have the force problem. Now, the one force left is friction, which probably is best. F=μN. Now, to maximise F (friction), you want to maximise μ (friction coefficient) by choosing something grippy. Then, you maximise N (Normal force). I won’t give you an answer, because that is on you. The normal force is any force that pushes onto the pole. Your next step is to ideate, there are lots of solutions and you have to choose one based on your robot mass and how fast you want to climb and you have to accommodate for motor coast and the pole in the middle. That’s on you.
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