MASLAB, Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory, is a robotics competition over winter session. Each year the competition goal changes. My year, 2024, we were tasked with stacking cubes. The cubes would start in stacks of 3 with alternating colors. Our robot would identify the stacks, knock them over, identify the cubes corresponding to our color, and stack them. My team of five people was granted a month to build and iterate the robot, competing against 11 other teams. 

1. Ram into a stack and knock over cubes

2. Funnel cube into center tower

3. Spear through cube's center hole with linear actuator

4. Lift cube with rack and pinion mechanism

These are the four essential steps of our design. Once you are in state 4, you can funnel in another cube and allow the speared cube to rest on top of the new cube. We then spear the bottom cube and lift. We would repeat this process until the round was almost over. We would then lower the cube tower, un-spear the bottom cube, open the front panel with a servo, and back away leaving a stack. Using this design, we were able to achieve second place.