BallBot

To start things off, I am a senior in high school enrolled in a four year engineering program. The program always ends with a final engineering project, which varies year by year. This year, we are to build a radio controlled vehicle that should be able to maneuver through a simple track, enter large rectangle arena, retrieve a ping pong ball in a circular dish from the center of the arena, and deposit said ball into a pit. There will be ten teams competing with one another in a timed tournament so our objective is to deposit our ping pong ball into our pit as fast as possible, before the competing vehicle. We are supplied with a R/C kit that includes a 4 channel receiver, 4 channel transmitter, control, and a servo. We are also supplied with many different motors, each varying in torque and RPM. I am wondering if anyone here has any experience in building something like this who would like to make any suggestions on how to go about this project. Mainly, I just need some input on what sort of appendage would be capable of retrieving a ping pong ball and dropping it into a pit. I know it sounds simple, but we do not have much to work with. If you have any ideas, please contribute. 60+% of my final semester grade is riding on this... >.> Thanks for reading this post, Happy Tuesday.

Well, to pick up the ping pong ball you could always;

1. "grasp" the ping pong ball and carry it over to the pit
2. slide/put the ping pong ball into a container that then can be emptied over the pit.

Of course, I don't know what the course will look like, nor do I know what you have to work with.