Just some General Questions about Robotics

Let's Make Robots Projects Showcase
1

Hello,

I’m just seeking some general information and didn’t know where to post this so I posted it under “Education”.

I’m toying with the idea of building a full size Johnny 5 (or Short Circuit) fully functional robot. I have a pretty nice woodshop along with some metal working tools including fairly large metal lathe and milling machine. I’m pretty good at building things from scratch. I also have a lot of experience in electronics, but that experience is somewhat outdated so I’m not up on the latest technologies.

My Dream:

As I’ve stated, my dream is to build a fully functional “Johnny 5” style robot. However, I’m more concerned with what this robot might be able to actually do as a practical matter when finished. So my focus is on functionality rather than to adhere to trying to duplicate the original Johnny 5 in precise detail. In fact, I may potentially change the design radically as I move forward. That is yet to be seen. I’m also open to other possible designs that may be more practical or useful. Since I haven’t yet started this project I’m wide open to suggestions. I’m just offering the Johnny 5 as something that seems to be pretty close to what I would like to end up with.

Technical Notes:

I used to work in electronic design building automated test equipment (projects too numerous to mention). But there was a lot of robotic type projects in my experience. I’ve done quite a bit of programming of automated equipment and I was always pretty good at that with very little debugging required. So I have some experience in this. But as I’ve stated earlier my experience is a bit out-dated. In fact I started programming on a TRS-80 computer when they very first came out. And I did a lot of programming in machine language on micro controller chips, like the 8051 and Motorola 68HC11 (if anyone still knows what those are).

In any case, I’ve only just recently discovered the new Raspberry Pi single board computer, and this has inspired me to consider building a robot. This new technology complete with WiFi wireless connection to a laptop seems to have taken care of a lot of things that would have previously been more difficult to deal with. So I’m planning on using a Raspberry Pi as the “brain” of my Johnny 5. Of course, there will also be a notebook computer dedicated to this robot project as well.

So anyway, this is what I have in mind up to this point. And again I’m open to suggestions for other possible paths I might take.

Now for my Questions:

Is there a “Johnny 5 Builder’s club” that I could join to get specific help with this project?

Is there any other Robot group or club I could join that would be of help with what I hope to accomplish?

And finally, does anyone know where I could obtain plans for building a Johnny 5 (or a similarly functional full-size robot, it doesn’t need to be a Johnny 5 precisely.)?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

2

None that we are aware of, but there are others on this forum who have gone quite far in constructing a Johnny 5 1:1 replica.
Is there any other Robot group or club I could join that would be of help with what I hope to accomplish?
Aside from the community here (various members have built various different Johnny 5 scale robots) it’s really best to get to know local robot enthusiasts.

We do not know, but perhaps a member of the community can offer some advice.

3

Thanks for the quick reply CB,

I’ve been doing some searching myself since I posted my questions.

I’ve actually found the following CAD drawings for a Johnny 5. There appear to be tons of drawings here on everything from the base and track assembly to the head and everything in between. Although I haven’t been able to view these drawings yet because I don’t have the CAD program required to open them. It appears that a CAD program called Solidworks is required to open these drawings and that program costs around $100 to purchase.

In any case, for anyone who might be interested, the links to drawing downloads are on this forum on Facebook. It’s an extremely sparse forum in terms of members and posts, but these drawings appear to be a goldmine for anyone interested in building a Johnny 5.

Input-Inc CAD FILES

And of course this also lead me to the Johnny 5 Builder’s Group on Input-Inc.com Here: Johnny Five Builder’s Group

I’ve joined their forum to ask more questions but they have to approve members individually, so I’m waiting for acceptance there before I can post any questions.

This Johnny Fiver Builder’s Group are the people who made all their CAD drawings public and open source. They appear to be going all-out to build a seriously functional Johnny Five that will also appear ascetically to be very similar to the one used in the movie Short Circuit.

It’s certainly not my intention to building anything that sophisticated. I’m expecting to build a far less ambitious robot that merely employees some of the design features of the Johnny Five.

In fact, if I just get a decent track base up and running with a head just mounted on the base that would be pretty cool right there. I’ve seen photos of other people doing something similar. Then robot arms could also be added to the base directly. This would be quite different from an actual Johnny Five, but it would also be far moire practical to build for sure.

So anyway, that’s where I’m at right now. Thought I’d share what I’ve found so far.

I’m still interested in finding other groups or clubs along these lines.

Perhaps I could keep track of all this Johnny Five information and start a thread on Johnny Five at some point.


**More information and another question too.  This time about electronics:**

On the Facebook Johnny 5 Builder's Forum I found the following information download for Ardunio board projects.  

[font=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif][Arduino Projects and Tutorials Ebook Collection 2014](https://apps.facebook.com/fbulletin/arduino_projects_and_tutorials_ebook_collection_2014-377574.html)[/font]

These are all PDF books and articles on how to build projects using Arduino boards.   I guess these are some sort of micro controller boards.   I've only browsed through them briefly at this time.   I'm wondering how popular they are, and whether or not they are worth looking into?

And more specifically, I'm wondering how they compare with something like the Raspberry Pi computer on a board.

[Raspberry Pi Official Website](https://www.raspberrypi.org/) 

This computer board looks really inviting for robot design.  And so I'm hoping to focus on the Raspberry Pi.  However, I'm wondering if the Arduino boards would still have a place in addition to the Raspberry Pi on a sophisticated robot?

So I'm just curious if anyone is familiar with both the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino, and especially if anyone uses both boards together on a single robot for some reason.  There may be pros and cons to each of these boards and that's the main thing I'm trying to discover. 

Anyway, I hope the information I've provided here may be helpful to others.  I'm just starting out on my "robot journey".