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.

We’re take rapid prototyping to a bigger scale with the MDF fiberboard Boxbot. Jason, our newest Cellbot contributor, designed the entire thing using Google SketchUp, and then cut up $10 worth of fiberboard on a CNC ShopBot. He built it using common hardware store components and is using two $16 windshield wiper motors to drive the wheels. The goal is to have a wide and sturdy platform for experimenting with robotics.

The control system is based on a Gadgetboard, an open source microcontroller experimentation board of Jason’s own design. We’re using two of the relays for each motor in a configuration that lets us drive forward and backward by flipping the four relays on and off in various combinations. The negative lines run through two Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) channels to give us control of the speed. We get full mobility by using just six of the channels, which leaves a lot of Gadgetboard capabilities for future add-on components.

In this video we’re using an emergency car battery for power but any 12V supply will do as long as it can handle up to 5 amps of current. The laptop is just temporary until we wire up a lower volt serial line into one of the Gadgetboard pins. Then we’ll use an Android cellphone for command and control to make it a true Cellbot.

We have an early draft of the SketchUp CAD design up on our source code page, and we’ll be refining the design as we put it though the paces. You can make a Boxbot of your own using the Gadgetboard design or a custom motor controller of your own. We’ll share more code, designs, and pictures as we flesh out the kinks and add more functionality. For now you can skim through this gallery to see the process so far.