Oh boy, it’s story time huh? My memory is a little hazy so some of these details may be off but the general idea is there.
2019 New England District Championship - QM 105
This story requires some context, the first being the design of our drivetrain that year. Historically, 1153 had run a welded steel frame with dead axle drive wheels, which in 2019 were 6" in diameter, giving us a lot of clearance from ground to robot when combined with fairly high bumpers. Notably, we opted for a set of pneumatic wheels in front to help with driving off the hab in auto. You can kinda see in this picture how close the belt that drove the front wheel is to the inside of the frame, and how much wider they were than the treaded wheels, putting the belt for the back wheels further from the center of the bot. This will become important later.
The second thing to note is the robot that our friends over at team 125 had built for that year. Their climb utilized a set of forks that were angled such that the weight of the robot would tip them forwards onto the hab. At some point, someone realized they could use the forks to wedge themselves under a robot already on the hab - perhaps one with a high frame. Whether or not this ability was planned from the start, I’m not too sure, but we were more than happy to give it a shot. After a lot of time on the practice field, we were able to find a way to make it work. By spinning around on the hab to put our pneumatic wheels facing the drive station, the spacing of the wheels now facing towards 125’s robot gave them some wiggle room to use our frame as support - one fork on the outside part of one of the wheels, and the other on the inside of the opposite wheel.
In Quals 105, we managed to successfully execute the first double climb at the event, even forgoing the rocket RP in favor of getting it done on the real field. The video of this match has the venue music playing super loudly so not much of it gets picked up, but I cannot forget how crazy the entire venue went when 125 lifted their bot off the ground right before the match ended.
Now, this story has a happy ending and a sad ending. 125 would go on to win the New England DCMP as the 2nd seeded alliance, securing victory in 2 of their playoff matches thanks to a double climb from their third robot. 1153, meanwhile, got picked as the third robot on the 3rd seeded alliance, and was on the losing end of one of those matches decided by a double climb in the semifinals. The #2 alliance managed to get team 558, who had a somewhat inconsistent suction climb which meant that they were still available, and their climb points also made the difference in Finals 1 in a matchup that went to 3. At the end of the day, we only managed to pull it off once, but it remains one of the coolest things I’ve been able to see on an FRC field.