The Side Arm – We originally had just one long piece of metal with a color sensor at the tip. But when you put the robot on the balance pad, it just made it harder to balance because it had to be able to knock off a ball like the one on the second picture in autonomous. Our new one can do it without having to have it in one same spot.
How the arm works – the new arm works in a very clever way, as you see by the pictures it consists of 3 parts, the sensor arm, and the movement arms. It is a 4 bar linkage that allows us to reach the jewels without exceeding the 18-inch height limit when retracted.