All of my brilliant roboticist friends are rushing to build functional BB-8 droids. I commend their effort but I wanted something cheap and fun that would work for a costume. To pull this off, I tossed together this fairly simple BB-8 droid puppet.
Extremely strong magnets allow the head to slide along the outside surface of a sphere, controlled by your hand inside. Any size of magnet should work as long as they are strong enough. I used magnets that were rated N52.
You can pull off some very convincing moves and if anyone asks why he doesn’t roll around, just say you couldn’t afford it!
Caleb – this is shear genius in the vein of JJ Abrams simplicity for Epi 8. Film is illusion (persistence of vision) and the illusion of an operating droid with minimal tech just cinches it. Nicely done for those of us messing around with omniwheels and interactive bluetooth.
Pretty clever Kaleb! I’d love to see that up close.
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