I believe this will exist, or maybe it already does. Do you believe? Is it conceivable that a robot with a single end effector could collect and hold ALGAE, and could index and place CORAL?
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Historically:
2023: yes (several different ways!)
2019: yes (mostly just 1 way, unless you were 971)
2017: not that I’m aware of
2015: sort of?
Called shot: we will see teams build a successful combo end effector that deals with both game pieces with minimal tradeoffs. However, we won’t see many teams adopt this architecture because 1) switching costs are too high and 2) the relative value of being able to score algae isn’t worth it.
Bonus called shot: it’ll look kind of like the intake that 111 popularized in 2023, allowing you to grab cargo algae and also roll a coral into the vertex of the intake from the human player station.
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We plan to test this on Saturday
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well… It would seem the Ninjineers (2383) have already proved this 
I do suspect it would require additional intake geometry though, at least to enhance speed.
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Yea but no. One end effector to hold both will exist, but I don’t think it will not rule them all because I see 2 independent end effectors being better, especially if you want to either combined cycle or intake algae from the reef.
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Your goals and mine are different. A combined HP coral (in the long direction) and Algae dereefing intake would be ideal for the robot architecture we are considering. We can intake the floor algae with a different subsystem mounted to the chassis.
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We agree with this, we think that two separate intakes are going to be ideal.
Our current intake is not consistent enough with algae that we aren’t comfortable using it at comp with harder algae.
I think it will happen. But not sure it’s worth the effort given the game piece counts. You can score coral on 36 reef branches and who knows how many piled in the trough. You can only score algae in the processor or the net. Having a mechanism that can switch from holding a smaller rigid game piece to a large squishy one would only pay off if they were of equal frequency and points.
And to be clear, I’m thinking of a mechanism that can only hold one or the other and morphs to the one game piece.
That said, now I’m going to try to CAD one anyway. 
I definitely think there is a single end effector that can hold both, but one aspect of this game that I think people aren’t considering is that, with the low cycle time and high cycle count, that means your end effector is going to be going up and down a LOT. Personally I don’t want a bulky 20 lbs dual purpose end effector slinging up and down 22+ times per match. I want an extremely light end effector, and that means single purpose. 85% of the time, it’s going to be used for delivering coral, so pulling your algae mechanism up for all of those coral placements just isn’t efficient.
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This is slander against the Algae Agenda
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Forgive me if I am wrong (I’m a programmer, not an engineer) but couldn’t this just be… A big claw arm? I understand that when I say big it would have to be HUGE to hold the… 16 inch? diameter kickballs, but you could use one end of the claw to pick up the coral. If you want to be a little more precise you could have 2 settings for closing the claw, one that closes around a ball and one for PVC pipes.
Naturally, it’ll need rubber grips if you tried that?
I should clarify that I’m looking for extremely light too with this question. I think it’ll be possible to do both game pieces effectively for like, five pounds.
no indeed
Pretty sure this concept could be adapted, sans wrist (unless you need the wrist of course)
one motor, belt and pulley, two shafts, some endplates and churro, both gamepieces.
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Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “in the long direction?”
I think we’re there, with motor included. Pretty similar to edit:6328 2023.
It doesn’t index well yet, and is pretty sensitive to coral input angle.
It’s a fun game piece this year.
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Or 6328?
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I guess you’ll just have to wait and see
Make sure to weigh the value of holding both elements at once, and whether you want to optimize for one game piece over the other