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!
In MAKE Volume 21, tinkerer Roger Hess wrote about the working replica he made of the Zoltar fortune teller machine from the movie Big. Perhaps we ought to put Roger in touch with Rye Playland, the location of that particular scene. As you can see from this photo from Scouting New York, a Pepsi machine […]
Peter Jacob of Lets Make Robots put together this incredibly detailed tutorial on how to make a simple robot gripper by hand using a cheap micro servo, plexiglass, rotary tool, and a tiny blowtorch.
We asked MAKE illustrator Damien Scogin to create some drawings so that folks could better understand the functioning of the basic robot plant design we’re using in the Micochip/Energizer Make It Last Build Series, Project #2: The Robot Plant. As we’ve said, you don’t have to make yours this way, this is just one idea, […]
Man, and I thought the hacks on the Wii sensor bar came fast and furious. Amazing what people are doing with the Xbox Kinect and how viral all of these hacks quickly become. This one, an autonomous quadrotor, uses the Kinect Sensor for navigation and obstacle avoidance. It was done as part of the STARMAC […]
With a very few notable exceptions, there was really nothing punk about The Fad Which Shall Not be Named. Steampop might really have been a better word. Fortunately, the steam in these posts is not, generally, even aspiring to punk status, although the word itself may, regrettably, appear a couple times in the copy on the linked pages. Please accept our apologies–we were excited–and enjoy this hot steamy content entirely on its own merits.
In truth, I regard the “robot uprising” meme with about the same level of seriousness as the “zombie apocalypse” meme. I suppose robots becoming sentient, independent, organized, and uncontrollably violent is at least plausible, but if I let all the plausible apocalypses keep me awake nights, I’d never sleep again. So, in the spirit of fun, here’s a collection of videos showing the mad, mad foolishness that roboticists have been up to equipping our future overlords with their tools of power. Or, in a more serious vein: Look at all the amazing stuff robots can do these days!
The iFixit crew recently disassembled a fully functional Parrot AR.Drone to see what makes it tick. From the teardown you may notice that the hardware seems pretty accessible. The gear’s just begging for a mod.
