The cardboard Truckbot showcases how inexpensive robots can be. That doesn’t mean they can’t also shine.
Using the same CAD design as the cardboard version, we printed one out of neon green acrylic. The 18″x24″ sheet we bought from Tap Plastics in Mountain View, CA was less than $20. With an optimized layout we could probably get four robots per sheet so it only adds $5 to the cost.
Check out the slideshow below for more details and check back soon to see it fully assembled and wheeling around. If you haven’t seen a laser cutter in action before, be sure to see our YouTube channel videos.
If you are looking for an inexpensive prototyping material, 1/8in fiberboard paneling is excellent. Generally you can get a 4×8 foot panel for around 10$.
http://4volt.com:8080/Blog/archive/0001/01/01/14.aspx
Great tip Jeremy!
I think what you are doing with cells and bots are incredible.
it’s related to some ideas i’ve been brainstorming.
one bit of information i’ve been trying to gather is about usage of satellite signal.
i’ve only heard of ways on movies like “live free or die hard” that satellite signals can be used to exchange information by the right hardware and software in certain devices available to the public.
do you know of any such things for the purpose of controlling one of your bots, without the limits of wifi signal or cell tower signals?
the next question i have related to your projects is, what kind of research have you done in self automating your bots?
say you have made your bot virtually independant of power, through solar or whatever, and you wanted you bot to travel several hundred miles. even at a high speed, it may get quite boring time consuming. But if there was some kind of simple auto pilot mode, say related to GPS, then it could go on it’s own for a while.
i also wanted to know if you could untilize the phone’s camera while controlling it from a PC to see what the bot sees?
have you done any research in controlling flying bots with cell phones?
and finally, have you done any research into tiny (small) bots? like insect size? are there ways to remove working parts from the cell phone to better consolidate the needed space for the hardware?
i look forward to any info you can provide for any of these questions.
Nick krk
Nick – those are all interesting things worth exploring. We haven’t done those yet but feel free to start up a thread on the discussion group and see if you find others interested in working on these:
http://groups.google.com/group/cellbots/topics
We’ll have video streaming soon and will also be working on more autonomy but there is much to be done. Contributions welcome!
Where did you purchase the neon green acrylic? For so cheap?