[Dan Petrovic]

There's a four bar linkage that actuates and grabs the ball.

Without the kicker, hurdling is tedious, not very reliable, takes forever, and uses a lot of air. We have to place the ball, then knock it off with the grippers themselves.

With the kicker, we just line up, and shoot and the ball is launched forward. It's not as far as most of the launchers you see here, but it's far enough to get the ball across the overpass.

And yes, we are still using the mecanum wheels

We have a really good plan about saving weight, I'm just waiting to get pictures off of my camera so I can post them here.