Interesting approach! I like how moves with pieces in the way were solved for the most part. A bit disappointing that the taken pieces have to be manually removed -- one way to handle that could have been to extend the range of the "head" to the margin of the board, and have it drag off the captured piece to that area before moving the capturing piece there.
I wonder if another mechanism altogether could work a bit better -- a matrix of electromagnets embedded under the board, with a resolution of say 1/4", so that when deployed in sequence, they could move the pieces from one magnetic field to another and another, without any actual moving parts involved.
I wonder if another mechanism altogether could work a bit better -- a matrix of electromagnets embedded under the board, with a resolution of say 1/4", so that when deployed in sequence, they could move the pieces from one magnetic field to another and another, without any actual moving parts involved.