There was discussion of using a hair drier or low powered eletric leaf blower to help herd or deflect beach balls for this game among the team. Being that a blower like that uses air, would that fall under the pneumatics rules?
Likewise, could a vacuum be used to grab and eject the beach balls?
No, they would not. Fans in their various configurations (blowers, venturi systems, etc.) do not come under the pneumatics rules. They don’t store or compress air and are open systems. There are other rules you need to pay attention to, like allowed motors, but not pneumatics. We did some research on this last season since we were trying to add a blower to our robot for the trap. We ended up using the Milwaukee M12 Blower, which has a non-FRC legal 775 motor, which we replaced with a legal 775pro. It’s a very powerful blower with both motors.