[BrendanB]

Neither. Feeding the robot to your tube means that your gripper/manipulator needs to be at a required height. Throwing the tubes onto the field increases your chance it will fall out out of the lane where an opponent can grab it, or fall into an odd position up against the field elements.

I would highly recommend dropping the tubes through the feeder on the ground. I did some testing at the field in Manchester and found that lightly dropping them onto the ground puts them in the same place in the lane each and every time nice and flat.

Those are my thoughts.