Neon Green Acrylic Truckbot Shines Bright

Our Truckbot robot has officially grown up. We started with some rapid prototyping using cardboard to flesh out our custom CAD design. We were surprised by how well the cardboard worked as a viable robot but we went ahead and splurged on $5 of neon green acrylic. Check out how sweet it looks doing compass orientation using the Android phone’s sensors.

The design is identical to the cardboard layout and we used the same laser cutter to make it (on a slower speed of course). We have some videos of using the laser cutter on our YouTube channel if you haven’t seen one before. The only difference is that we could use bolts to hold the sides together.

We also received our caster wheels in the mail so we replaced the shower door wheel we were using before. These things were less than a $1 each but it took forever for them to ship from India. We’ll try and get a bunch in bulk so we have them on hand if you want to buy a kit from us. Note how the entire back area can be used for hauling payload now, which makes this a true Truckbot.

Next up we’ll be working on two-way serial communications, adding BlueTooth as an option, and incorporating Android’s voice recognition for command input. Feel free to download the source yourself and add ideas to the issue tracker. Cellbots is all open source and we’re thrilled to be working with so many clever hackers out there incorporating cell phones into robotics.

Check out the image gallery below and we hope you make you check out the parts list and customize your own design. Hopefully you have a hackerspace nearby where you can borrow a laser cutter. If not, your local acrylic store may have one. Or to save you time and effort, we can put a robot kit together for you.