[KenWittlief]

one of our mechanical engineers came up with the idea for the telescoping arm - I dont think its ever been done on a FIRST robot before - there is a plastic chain inside it that only bends in one direction.

to extend the arm we push the chain into the bottom tube with a globe motor. The arm has three sections, and it reaches up 9 feet from the floor.

those are commercial suction cups on the end - the hose runs up inside the chain, and we use a commercial vacuum pump that is piston actuated, driven by a fisherprice motor (had to remove the original motor from the vacuum pump)

the arm raises and lowers with a van door motor on a half gear

the front roller pulls balls into a curve scoop that stays in contact and sends the balls straight up into the net (we might replace that with a clear box)

not seen is the Analog Devices gyro sensor that we use to generate a compass heading, for auton mode and to drive with closed loop steering
and we have contact switches on the front to tell when we hit something

and IR sensors on both sides with pinhole openings so we can tell when we are near the beacons and its time to turn towards them

BTW - this is a photo from a couple weeks ago - we have triwheels on the bot now.