[calvinstence]

In our setup (and if I am correct, most of the other team's winch setups), the direction of the ratchet never changes. The ratchet only stops the gearbox from backdriving when it is under load. What releases the dog gear is a pneumatic cylinder- in our case, we have a hefty cylinder of somewhere in the 1.5 inch diameter range, on a lever around 14 inches long to multiply the force. This is way overkill, but it works flawlessly, and we can engage and release the gearbox by hand if we need to.

If my description was hard to understand, check out the Andymark robot in 3 days team's videos on how they did their winch system. We aren't using the same shooter design as they are, but our retraction and release systems are quite similar.