Perpet marble machine
Lets Make Robots user David Hasle made this wonderful marble sculpture using a PICAXE microcontroller, servo, battery, and some wire.
Robotics
Making a robot can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s the perfect combination of creativity, engineering and problem solving. However, if you’re just getting started in robotics, it can also be overwhelming. To make things easier for those who are just starting out, we’ve put together some tips and tricks to help makers bring robots to life! From the basics of assembling your robot to software implementation, these pointers will give you everything you need to get started on your robotic adventure!
Magnificent mech costume
Holy smokes. My personal post-Halloween costume timer officially expired yesterday, but I had to make an exception for this work of art from “friend of a friend” of Redditron This_comment_has. So. Awesome. [via Boing Boing] More: Behold Your Doom: Children’s battle mech Real-life mech awakens, emits flame from appendages Star Wars AT-ST (Chicken walker) costume […]
DIY universal robot gripper
Inspired by the awesome universal robotic gripper, Carlos of Carlito’s Contraptions decided to take matters into his own hands, and built his own using a party balloon, tubing, cloth, coffee, rubber band, and his lungs.
Autonomous armed cellbot sentry
A robot army’s got to start somewhere, right? Not quite an army yet, but definitely in the minion category, Squirt, from cellbot hacker Michael Winter means business. Pesky vermin beware!
10-shot gatling t-shirt cannon
This harrowing t-shirt cannon was built by Team 254 Robotics of Bellarmine College Prepatory of San Jose, California with the help of NASA Ames Robotics. It weighs 160 pounds, can shoot over 200 t-shirts per tank, has a range of upwards of 150 yards, and packs a rate of fire of 3 shirts a second. […]
How-To: DIY tank treads from roller chain, rubber hose, nuts & bolts
his very clever design by Derek Engelhaupt has me looking around the house for something I can put tank treads on. The sofa, maybe?
It’s actually one of seven designs for homebrew treads collected on this page over at R/C Tank Combat, which looks to be an absolutely fascinating click-trap. [via Hack a Day]
Excerpt from intersystem comm logs, 2025
Eric Brown and co-workers at the University of Chicago have just published their design for an entirely non-anthropomorphic robot gripper based on the “jamming” principle. The gripper consists of a spheroid balloon, filled with dry coffee grounds, which can be filled with air or evacuated through the arm. Adding air expands the balloon and lets the coffee grounds flow freely around an object; withdrawing it contracts the balloons and “jams” the grounds in place around that object.