Minion - my daughter's first robot

Let's Make Robots Robots
1

Hi guys, few days ago we started to plan and make a new robot with my daughter. She is 5 years old and loves to build things. The picture uploaded represents the plan. M stands for motor or servo, B for battery and C for computer. You'll see a strange box with a cabel to the robot on the picture. This is the optional remote controller. We plan to make it from thin wood cardboards approx. 3mm. I think the legs will be double thickness due to stability. The head should be able to tilt left and right. My doughter finds it funier. She gave it the Name Minion because of the head shape. We use this blue plastic micro servos. The size of the Robot should be 25 cm x 16 cm. I'm just thinking about the joints between the parts using the servos. Any ideas or suggestions?

UPDATE 07.08.2017

Yesterday we managed to draw some shapes we took 1:1 from the sketch and we cut then out of the wooden plates. We glued with glue for wood where needed, f.e. legs to make them stronger and 3D shape. Then I drilled the holes to attach the servos in a stable way. I’ll describe it in the next post in detail with some photos.

Drawings on the wooden plates and the simple saw.

450×493

Cutted parts. Taken from the sketch 1:1.

After drilling and glue. Do you see the holes for the ultrasonic sensor? We'll use it for the self navigation of the robot.

UPDATE 13.08.2017

We finished the robot. Here some pictures.

Robot parts painted

The plan on a A4 letter and right next to it the 1:1 finished robot

500×500

Front view

235×500

Side view

336×500

Rear view

500×500

Detail view inside of the body

500×500

And the family. Insect bot, minion bot abd otto bot

 

Well my litle doughter had lot of fun building and painting it together with me. Or I with her :). 

List of materials:

Arduino nano, funduino shield, 5x sg9 micro servo, 1x ultrasonic sensor, some wires, power bank as battery and 3mm thin wooden plates

Total amount: around 25 Euros

Summary:

The servos can carry and easy operate the given movements. This means they have enough power for this operation even with 5v. We protrude the servo geared wheels through the wooden plates and attached from outside the original servo horns. This gave us extra stability. We can control the robot by using the ultrasocnic sensor. 

Walks around

  • Actuators / output devices: 5 servos
  • Control method: Autonomous and remote
  • CPU: Arduino Nano
  • Power source: 1 Power bank
  • Sensors / input devices: ultrasonic
  • Target environment: indoor
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/minion-my-daughters-first-robot
2

Right track

Using small 9g servos and cardboard should allow you to come up with a working design. You might base your design on: 

https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/otto-diy-opensource-biped-robot-you-can-build

You can use clear plastic from packaging or a dollar store, and make the head out of painted papier mache.

3

Small servos

Hi Cbenson,

thanks for the commen and suggestion. I’m happy to hear that it should work with those small servos. We’ll try to make the head also from the wood plates. I thought if it was a little heavy and can tilt, then it could help during walking by shifting the weight centre point. Means tilting the head to the left results to less weight on the right side of the robot. Then it is easier to lift the leg up.

The link you shared I already used to build my own one in red. I really need to share it here. During the assemby and while using it I recognised some weak points. One of it is the junction between the parts made by the servo plastic geared wheels. I see that it moves pretty much because such a junction is even not perfect. I know that there are servos with metall gears and flanges to connect metall pieces. That is really strong. But for my purpose here it’ll be too much. Therefore I’m searching for some clever simple joint.

If I found one I’ll share. :wink:

4

Weight

Ideally don’t add unecessary weight. If you want to move weight higher, just move the batteries :slight_smile:

5

Weight

This is a good idea! Thank you! I’ll try to integrate the battery into the head. Then it can uses the duck bot tilt feature a bit.

6

Yay!
So glad to see your daughter being into robots and building them! We need more girls and women in STEM!

I look forward to seeing the completed robot.

7

creative

Hi NeoGirl101,

I absolutely agree with you! And for me it seem girls and women are more creative while building robots then men. And that is wonderful.

I’ll keep this post updated, I promise.

8

Awesome!
What a cool robot! So unique… Excellent work to both of you!

9

Thanks

Thank you very much!

10

Copied

Well done! You copied her drawing quite well. Hope she appreciates seeing it materialize and wants to continue and learn more.

11

Hope she will

Thank you. I let her do as much as possible. She loves her bot. Her sister helped with painting and they agreed that we need to build another bigger bot. I hope they can write the code soon. We will see.

12

Scratch

At 5 years old, she might be ready to try Scratch (programming language)?

13

the biped mechanism looks

the biped mechanism looks cool but the color of the body didn’t match each other

14

Thanks

Thanks for your comment. The color does not match each other at all, I know. I think my doughter wanted just to use as much as possible colors. Well she is 5 and likes colors :-D 

15

This is a really cool

This is a really cool bot…I love seeing kids taking interest in robotics/ electronics/ making things. One question: what size (maH) power bank did you use?

16

2800 mAh

Thank you. We use a 2800 mAh one.

17

Scratch or Ardublock

Thanks for the proposal. It needs to be very easy at this stage. And also for me as I’m not a C or C++ crack. Everything learned by doing. I will try it out.