[Knufire]

See the original intake from the 111 2012 robot or the 1678 2014 robot for examples of polycarbonate intakes.

The idea here is that you want a material that is tough, not strong. While strength is a measure of the amount of stress a material can take before failure, toughness is a measure of how much energy the material can absorb before failure, and is a mixture of the strength and ductility of the material. You want the polycarbonate intake to deflect when it is hit instead of breaking, but this naturally means that your intake won't be stiff. On the other hand, you can have a very stiff aluminum intake that will always be in the same spot relative to your robot frame, but you will then have to build it to be strong/tough enough to withstand impact.