[Jared Russell]

The square tubing on top has two purposes:

1) It supports our covering (not shown) that deflects/blocks balls.
2) It allows our arm to right ourselves if we flip onto our rear (which requires a fairly unlikely sequence of misfortunes to happen, but better safe than sorry, right?)

The white piece you see at the front of the robot is the kicker; it is a bar between two CNC'd plates that kick underneath the ball magnet. The kicker is drawn back by a mechanism inspired in part by Winnovation's 2008 machine.