[Kevin Sevcik]

Whether a ball vacuum "sets apart the men from the boys" isn't really the most important question in whether you should design one into your robot. I thinkit's obvious that a robot with an effective vacuum is more attractive than an identical robot without that vacuum, but that's not the the only question that determines whether you should go with one or not. The benefits of a vacuum are obvious, but you do need to look at the potential costs associated with one.

It's highly unlikely that an effective vacuum would be the only difference between the two robots. A ball vacuum is going to take addtional time, space, weight, and materials on your robot. If adding a vacuum to your robot's design pushes your completion date back a week or more, then you need to consider if your robot would be better off with a vacuum, or an extra week of practice time for the drivers. If it pushes you over weight, or reduces the effectiveness of your other systems, you need to consider that. Most importantly, if it would be a serious technical stretch for your team to complete it successfully, then you should be having serious second thoughts. A non-working vacuum on which you've spent significant time space and weight is a much, much larger detriment to your robot than not having one in the first place.

So, if your team is fully capable of designing, building, and integrating a ball vacuum in the next 3.5 weeks, then yes it would be beneficial. But if it's realistically going to take longer than 4 weeks from now... It's probably not the best idea for your team.