Picking up Cigarette Butts?

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to pick up cigarette butts via a robotic mechanism?

I'm designing a robot that will pick up trash from ditches and what not... a huge problem is the cigarette butts on the side of the road among rocks. I've developed a way to pick up other trash such as pop cans, paper/plastic bags, and flag all other objects that would not be able to be lifted.

Team 648 spends several days cleaning up Quad City roadsides and other areas, so I figured it would be a nice way to attract more attention to FIRST and engineering if people saw students picking up trash alongside a robot.

I'm going to start Vex prototyping it tomorrow and then hopefully have a fully built robot by the time we do the X-Stream Cleanup in August.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Jeremiah