Since the Hanging Bars are hollow, I believe that a hook would be a very simple and effective means of grabbing and holding onto the Bar. I was also thinking I could use some “peg legs” like these that were used for elevation in NBN to get up to the Bar to hook onto there. I did the math on this, and it seems like 2 torque-geared motors could push up a 15-pound robot with more than 2/3 of stall torque to spare. With 4 motors used for drive train, up to 4 for catapult, this seems like a good means to do a High Hang, and thus I’ll be prototyping it to see if it works, and if it does, I’ll have my team use it on their robots.
My question about such a system is that because all the robot’s weight is being supported by the hook, and with such a small hole to get into. the robot’s weight is being cantilevered (i.e. the hook is so far from the robot’s CoM), and thus I’m worried that the robot could actually swivel 180 degrees around the Bar, breaking <S2>. How could I stop such a swivel from happening?
Another reason why I want to prevent such a swivel is that I want to hang in autonomous, and so when driver control begins, I need to come back down to enter play, and so I want to make sure the robot stays aligned such that I don’t contact the field perimeter on the way back down.