I’ve seen a lot of passive boxes around on cd. Are there any advantages to an active mechanism for gear placing? The way I see it, it’s a very small time gain for a lot of effort, but there may be other advantages.
we are using an active mechanism, so the gear actually gets far enough on the peg to be lifted without falling off.
As an active gear team, I do not regret having the extra complexity one bit! With our mechanism we hardly need to stop at the peg instead of waiting for the pilot to pull it completely clear of the mechanism. It was a lot of work, but worth it. 
Active manipulators will save time every time but how much time they save really won’t be determined till competition and it’s all affected by the pilot and how aware they are of a robot being at the lift peg.
The area that gears are placed is not a safe zone. A clever driver could probably hit a robot at the right time to knock a gear off the lift.
We have an active gear placer, mostly to get the gear closer to the shaft collar end of the peg. If we have a team which is removing gears from pegs, we can remain in place to protect the gear, as the peg will be reaching into our frame perimeter, but will have “clear sky” overhead for a lift (We’re pushing the gear on the left and right sides.)
If they can see it.
There’s also a good chance teams will attempt to strand defenders on the legs between the lifts ;).
If the team’s objective is to score 2-3 gears per match the time benefits don’t compound all that much.
If the team’s objective is to score 4-6 gears per match the time benefits compound twice as much! Suddenly a few seconds per cycle add up to the time needed to climb, score some fuel, or perform a defensive play.
Advantages I see:
-Robustness in placing gear/maximized misalignment capability
-Speed in placing gear (1-10s per gear, depending on what else the pilots are doing)
-No need to coordinate with pilot
-Improved auto reliability and/or ability to do more than a gear in auto without relying on a pilot
-Potential to be part of a 3-gear auto
-Some mechanism and packaging advantages (it is really helpful to not need a slot for the peg going through part of the robot)
The tricky thing about this comparison is that on the surface, a few extra gears isn’t worth much (see attachment).
Yet the average difference in alliance score can be (2 to 3 per match for 3rd bot) a 55% chance of getting the 4th rotor vs (4 to 6 for 3rd bot) a 97% chance of getting the 4th rotor. That is massive.
Probabilistic models were created at www.getguestimate.com. I added a link to my signature.
Passive or active, there is always the curse of drive station 2.
What curse is that?
Sight lines. They are going to be terrible.
I’m going to agree with the statement that the tradeoffs in creating an active mechanism does not seem like it will be worth the small amount of time saved except maybe at the extreme high performance level.
The main issue with a passive mechanism that seems to be mentioned is time for the pilot to notice and pull the gear. While this may add an additional half to full second in the time the pilot takes to physically pull up the lift, I think that the expectation that the pilots will be too busy to see or be able to respond to the passive gearing robot is overstated. Pilots will be focused on the match. Pilots will pull up the gears from incoming robots before placing and turning the ones on the ship. And of course pilots can tend to the passive gear bots before pulling up the gears from the active robots. The only situation I can see where a reasonable pilot would not be at the lift the moment the passive gear bot gets there is if three passive gearing robots all get to the airship at the same time.
That being said, I can see an active mechanism having a benefit if it is easier to integrate into the design or more space efficient. Personally I feel that the time to design and the additional point of failure that results from an active mechanism is just not worth the few seconds you will save each match.
Our gear transport is passive. I could see where the argument could be made that you waste a few moments of time waiting for the pilot to lift the gear out, but since our only event this season will be week 1 we aren’t too worried about that detail.
True, but then you should have automated gear peg alignment 
I’m actually more interested in seeing how many teams have active systems for retrieving the Gear, not placing it.
What are we considering the line between passive and active? I can see ours as a “semi-active” as it has small portions of it moving, but the manipulator itself doesn’t move.
Seems like an answer in the opening post of the thread.
Yes I’m interested in this as well. We found that an active receiver from the station is far superior to a passive funnel. Just giving the gear a little bit of force downwards is going to help seat it even in a box and can correct for misalignment.
Regarding active placers, we decided that that’s also very beneficial. I think someone else in the thread said that there are tradeoffs, but we managed to package an active placer in a volume smaller than many teams passive systems.
In my opinion, I think all the high-level gear bots are going to be able to dump the gear the instant the peg gets in the gear.
We are attempting both an active intake (from the floor or from the loading station) and an active placing mechanism (opening the box and an active push onto to spring). We will see within the next few days how successful these are.
Tricky thing about active feeder systems - do they still work when the bot isn’t up against the wall? If not, then there may be a real possibility of negating their time benefit by wasting cycle time clearing balls/etc before intake.