Re: How can you pick up a hula hoop?
 

/offtopic

Everytime I see a hula hoop, I think of the movie The Hudsucker Proxy.

Great Flick.. Watch it if you get a chance.

Re: How can you pick up a hula hoop?
 

i used to to the same thing...so using this concept i would just take a powered wheel with a suspension system (gas spring pushing down, while the wheel is pivoted) and have a hook at the correct elevation to "catch the hoops"

with this concept you could literally drive around a field of hula hoops grabbing all of them as you drove.

Re: How can you pick up a hula hoop?
 

i take it we arn't talking about hula hoops as i thought you meant on reading the topic title (http://www.nexternal.com/whitewhale/images/tandbhula1.jpg)
if you attached to the hula hoop at 2 points (say 30° either side) then you would be able to turn it and flip it too (well sorta)

Re: How can you pick up a hula hoop?
 

okay, so we know how to pick up a hoop now. What about picking up a hoop off of a stack with a pole in the middle of the stack ( to keep the hoops more or less together). the pole will create a problem ( you can't roll it, and you have to somehow be prepared for the fact the hoops wont stay exactly in their stack) so you have to have something that can either pick up the whole stack (for this instance we'll say 25 hoops) or can pick up hoops that have a funky orientation...

just to make it a bit more interesting....