[Neil2012]

I have a few things that teams should avoid. First of all, catapults. In 2008, I designed one for our team, but the execution of the design was poor and the end effector team couldn't find anything that would pick up the balls well. Also, avoid linkage arms. In 2010, I yet again designed a 12 bar linkage for our team and, even though it performed to specifications, the work that has to go into making the lengths right so that it can extend to 7 feet and still fold up flat, is monumental. You can do it with math, but the equations are way too complicated for anyone at the high school level.