The Tale of TupperBot
By Ángel Hernández
“Yes, this is a robot and yes, it is
Tupperware, but there is no room
for your food!” That’s how most
of my conversations start when
people ask me about TupperBot.
Have you ever felt like spending
hundreds of hours trying to figure
out how to put four wheels
together on a cool robot you have
in mind? Have you ever spent
more time struggling with the
mechanics of your robot than
designing the electronics or
programming cool features?
That’s usually how I feel, and how
TupperBot was born.
72 SERVO 08.2012
Why Tupperware?
I live in a flat in downtown Madrid, Spain, so I don’t
have enough room to have nice machinery tools, but I love
making robots. I try to keep them simple, good looking, and
fun. This challenging problem has an easy solution:
Tupperware! Those plastic containers we use for food have
a second calling as a robot base.
TupperBot 0.1: Just learning some robotics here.
It was 2006 when I made my first robot during a large
tech festival. I had just a couple of electric screwdrivers, a
handmade microcontroller board, some relays, and a small
plastic box where I kept some of my tools during events. It
was at that point I decided it would be a good idea to put
everything together to make a fun, improvised robot.
However, I didn’t have anywhere to keep my tools anymore.
TupperBot was born!
