The Little Robot That Could

Are you curious about the robot that Pablos and 3ric were designing in a recent video podcast? They completely redesigned it to make the “hackerbot.” Their robot ended up looking like a spinning double sided axe.

Inspired by their robot, and Rich’s advice, I made my own robot. While most robots use titanium or airplane grade alluminum, I chose a different strategy to protect my robot.

The googly eyes and a wireless transmitting video camera made it complete.

Here’s an image from the camera. This robot is on it’s way to come and tear my robot up. It was unable to get to the vulnerable parts of my robot, but it did manage to saw a slot through the foam all around my robot and shred the transmitting video camera. There were no hard feelings. When you put a robot in the cage, you have to expect that your going to home with what Pablos called, “a bag of shrapnel.”

With so much damage, I had to really work to keep my robot competitive. With red and black tape and a whole lot of lexan and some titanium donated by Rob Farrow, my robot changed from a pink eggbot into a lady bug. Make sure to watch the video all the way to the end to find out if my little robot really is the little robot that could!

I had a lot of help on this project. Big thanks go out to Jennifer Rundle and Grendel for helping with camera operation while I was competing. All the great robot enthusiasts of Western Allied Robotics were super nice, helpful and encouraging. You can see more photos of the event here and here and here. The black and white polaroid photograph at the top of the article was taken by Billy Hatcher
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