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!
I love miniball bots and other types of ballbots where the electronics and mechanics are housed inside and the vehicle “navigates” by rolling around and bouncing off of stuff. Here’s the same basic idea, inside a cylinder (a clear paint can). It’s the Barreller, by Randy Sarafan. The way the continuous rotation servo is used […]
John Harris of Willows, CA, build TOBI the ToolBot, a robot that packs a Propeller, a TPA81 Devantech 8 Pixel thermal sensor array, Parallax HB-25 motor controllers, and 3 Ping))) ultrasonic sensors. It can carry a full toolbox and a laptop up a ramp.
Bill Gurstelle had a broom-based Bristlebot at Maker Faire Austin, but I never saw it in action. This one was built by Gregg Horton. He has an Instructable that shows you how he did it. Seems like you could easily add some sort of bumpers or other obstacle avoidance rigging so that you wouldn’t need […]
Randy Sarafan just made another simple moving bot, this time with four legs for walking: My goal with Walker Bot was to make a 4-legged walking bot that could be made in ten minutes. This bot ultimately took me three hours to make. That said, my goal wasn’t to make one in ten minutes, but […]
If I were forced to pick only one personal favorite of all the cool stuff I’ve blogged about while working for Make: Online, it would probably be Mark Ho’s original Zoho Artform figure. This is his latest version, made mostly from aluminum and available in ten anodized colors. I have no idea what they cost, and I’m sure I don’t really want to know, but I’d love to see more machinists following in Mark’s footsteps and making pure “machined art.”
Matthew Reyes sent word that the RocketMavericks launch event on Saturday in Nevada’s Black Rock desert was a resounding success. Traveling 28K feet aboard James Dougherty’s Intimidator-5 rocket was a payload consisting of a Nexus One/Arduino SmallSat. Matthew and his cohorts Chris Boshuizen & Will Marshall are championing the use of smartphone components to lower the cost of deploying a satellite and expect it to become even more affordable with every revision.
The ARM powered Motorola Droid controlled LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot called MultiCuber 777 solves a 7x7x7 V-CUBE 7 in 38 minutes 54 seconds.
