DEWBOT XIII Rope Climber

CAD rendering or original climber

At 50 points per robot, SteamWorks' endgame climb is in no way optional. Climbing makes up a large portion of a typical match's total score and in light of this, having a robot on your alliance missing a climb generally means that your alliance loses.

Key climber requirements are:

1. Reliability - The climb needs to work every time
2. Speed - The climb needs to take <10 sec including engagement. Robots having faster climbs are able to continue scoring longer or delay slow-climbing robots from reaching their ropes
3. Shouldn't back-drive
4. Don't fall!

Climber

A number of approaches were prototyped, before designing and developing DEWBOT's climber. The original iteration of the climber comprised an 8" long, 1" diameter aluminum tube having nine 1/4"-20 bolts set at 180 deg and staggered. The bolts engaged loops in our rope, and once engaged, the robot climbed. Printed flanges at the tube ends constrained the coiling rope and kept it from fouling the bearings.

Engaging the loops with the bolts proved too unreliable and slow in practice. After Seneca, the bolt/loop system was replaced by Velcro. In making this change, we clad the aluminum tube with 1" PVC pipe (1.315 in OD) around which adhesive-backed hook Velcro is wrapped.

The climber was designed to mount on the robot superimposed over the shooter, making it space-efficient.

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