Discussion for this event started with talk of re-attempting trash pickup or something similar. We quickly settled on milk delivery and came up with a fairly complete set of rules early on. Unfortunately, that didn't prevent any of us from procrastinating and not really starting until the last minute. Ah well.

This was a fun event, one I would very much like to reattempt. It was very simple on the surface but hard enough to be interesting, with many different was of completing the mission and minimal programming. Plus plenty of opportunities to show off building skills.

Lessons learned on this one:

• I need to tighten up my turning radius for the right-angle turns coming out of the staging area. My drive wheels would bind up on the body in tight turns.
• My trailer needs to track better - I was going off the road, knocking over poles, getting the small rear wheels caught against plates holding the roads together, etc.
• Probably adopt Gabe's arm mechanism, or something similar. It was more consistent than mine and much less subject to the vagaries of chance.
• My biggest weakness was following the line - the light conditions in the house change enough that I could only complete about half of the course. Consider a darkly shrouded setup with my own internal light source to make things more consistent.

	Front view, showing the drive mechanism and line-following light sensor on the tractor portion. I could probably have stood to reduce the gear reduction slightly or increase the tire size; the bot was a little slow. I initially went with only a 3:1 reduction with these tires, but that proved too fast and hard to control. The final 9:1 was too steep.
	The left side. The bushings are just spacers in the hinge mechanism; as mentioned above, I could have used even more space between the tractor and trailer.
	Note the slight angle that the magazine is mounted at. You can also see the gear racks used on the arm.
	A peak at the internals. The arm was driven directly from an 8-tooth gear on the motor. You can see the touch sensor used to detect both ends of the arm's movement.
	These three pics show the loading mechanism. As the arm moves back, the tiles on top prevent canisters from falling. Things are designed so that the canister falls just as the grippers start to close. The canister then prevents those above from falling. This is entirely gravity-fed and is subject to an occasional misfire depending on the pull of Jupiter's gravity and whatnot else. The touch sensor on top of the motor is used for startup calibration of the light sensor.
	My high-tech release mechanism - a string of the correct length that yanks the grippers open. This is definitely one of my lowest-tech bots ever, but was surprisingly effective despite that. Maybe I'm onto something.