[Chris is me]

So, this is probably my big mistake of the year, but I think if your team is capable of it and has the resources to do it, picking up gears off the ground is a competitive advantage.

It has nothing to do with autonomous mode - scoring multiple gears in auton is foolish. Scoring more than 10 balls is both much easier (in that you can repeatably do it without any assistance) and much more rewarding.

It also doesn't have much to do with picking up your own dropped gears. That shouldn't happen - if you're a team good enough to build an elite ground pickup you'll figure out how to score them consistently. If you are the kind of team who constantly drops gears... well... your ground pickup won't likely be good anyway.

The key advantage is that if it's truly a touch it, own it intake, you're going to be able to cycle without stopping and waiting. The human player drops the gear 2 seconds before your robot drives past, your robot flies through and sucks in the gear, and you've shaved a second or two off each cycle.

Additionally, if your partners are able to drop gears, you can be the gear-scoring specialist on an alliance who stays near the pegs placing gears on them while shooting oriented robots spend a greater percentage of their time shooting balls into the high goal.

That said, I don't think it is a big enough advantage to justify doing if you haven't figured out a simple solution. And you should have a human player based backup design ready to bolt on if it doesn't work like you want to. If it's slower than driving into the wall and getting it from the human player, it's a waste.