Human Player Loading
Floor Intake
Our gear mechanism prototype started out as a cardboard box with a hole in the front for the peg to go through. We continued working on a final design made out of polycarbonate so it would be easy to change the design as needed.
We added more features to it to improve performance and reliability. Some of the changes we made were: adding a cover to keep balls out, making the bottom able to be opened and closed to avoid waiting for the pilot to remove the gear, and adding a hole in the back so the the gear can go farther back on the peg and have less of a chance to fall off.
After build season, we decided that it was important to have a floor pickup for the gear, so we designed and tested a second gear mechanism that is able to pick up a gear from the floor and place it on the peg.