I know I've posted this before but the question keeps popping up so I guess it bears repeating.

I used to design baggage handling conveyors.

How it works is.

You check your bag and they put it on a conveyor. At the same time people are checking in bags at all the other airlines and check in stations.

We'll follow your bag on it's journey but remember that it is one of thousands.

Your bag goes to a transfer matrix (another set of conveyors) where it has to change onto a sorting conveyor and then onto the conveyor that goes to the boarding gate.

Here's where the problem lies, you have this bag travelling along at a fair speed, followed closely by the next bag.

Now you have to get this bag off of the conveyor and onto the other conveyor without tangling with the next bag.

To do this they have a device euphemistically called "A Pusher".
This device has a paddle which hits the bag (gives it a big hefty clout) and sends it flying into the air where it hits a rubber curtain and falls onto the next conveyor.

I tried to convince the company I was working for to design a device that synchronized its movement with the conveyor and picked up the bag. But they weren't interested.