The plan for the next edition of the claw tool is to allow for it to pick up a pop can.  Two frames of thought on this:

1. Use a vacuum source to suck the pop can up into a cylinder.  The vacuum could possibly be a refrigerator pump.  Not sure if there is enough cfm, but it gives me an excuse to make it an accessible tool.

2. Use 3 tracks located 120 degrees around the pop can radially.  Have a spring loaded tension to drag it up into its grasp.

The problems that I see with this is having to have a grid of the pop cans to allow for a user to move over the can standing up right and away from other cans.  There will be a material with holes drilled/profiled a little larger than the od of the cans.  These holes would be on a grid.  

That will keep the cans upright and ready for picking.  Now how to locate the claw exactly over the pop cans. . . This will be just a matter of keeping track of steps to the locations of the pop cans.  Make a sort of "snap to" grid that the claw would hover over.  The problem is not having enough "game" to it.  The kids would just pick what pop they want and always get one (as long as a can was under it).  

At this point, I will start to work on the vacuum pump getting it ready to be easily applied to projects.  Make vacuum connections easy.  We will go from there.