Servo - April 2013

Then

and

NOW

Get That Robot Built the Easy Way by Tom Carroll Robot building can be quite easy or very frustrating, depending on the approach you take in design and construction. Ten years ago, I

of stores that sell computers.

We don’t have to worry any more since we have so many good sources for robot parts and even complete robots. However, before delving into how to locate parts for your robot, allow me to present two unique and first-rate home-built robots.

wrote an article for the Nuts &

Dave Shinsel and Loki

Volts ‘robot supplement’ entitled Robot Parts all Around Us, to show potential builders just how easy it was to find robot parts. Parts to build great

I have mentioned these robots that epitomize extreme home-built robots in past articles. I first met Dave back in 2009 at a Portland Robotics meeting where he was demonstrating his homemade robot, Loki (shown in Figure 1). The body and arms are

robots are all around us. There is a mind set that we must develop to be able to recognize these parts when we see them.

When you are out shopping the next time, start to look around with a potential robot project in mind. Look past the item's intended use and imagine how it could be incorporated in a future robot project. "Can this electric drill or this bowl or even this sliding door pulley be

used when I build Robbie?"

When personal and hobbyist robots first became popular 30 years ago and a few stores began to display some robot kits on their shelves, PCs were already well established. There were far more computers in homes than robots at that time. Robot enthusiasts realized that the earliest computers offered a way to write and then edit text, draw, and even develop complex spreadsheets. Hundreds of software programs became available for various needs.

However, robots at that time — despite their onboard computer — could do little more than roam about our living rooms, entertaining us with their cuteness.

Surplus houses in the ‘80s had vast stocks of gearmotors, metal stock, gears, drive belts and pulleys, unique hardware, and other items of interest to robot builders. It was the lack of functional — yet inexpensive — sensors coupled with cheap microcontrollers that held back the development of experimental robots.

These surplus outlets have changed since that time, and “big box” stores and Internet robot suppliers are now the sources for most of our home-built robots. PCs still outsell robots probably 25 to 1, as there are tens of thousands