GB101LMR "Jack"

Update: Same video, but now also streaming from a different provider, as some complained that they could not see the first one.

I had 2 weekends to complete "something robotish that kids in the mall can play with", and I was paid to do the job :)

I invented this game; GB101LMR "Jack" (this robot) is radio controlled by the player. Object is to move chestnuts from one end of a track to the other.

The track was white polystyrene with black tape, and the player loses energy if crossing the black areas, or is lifted up or otherwise off track.

Inside the track I could place strong magnets, and the robot also could detect those; Magnet facing north up, meant "Power up" for the player, south up made "instant only 10% energy left".

"Rainbow-meter" on one side of Jack showed the amount of energy left. When at completely cloud, the game is over, you are dead!

What the player saw on the "hotspots of magic" was perhaps a flower and a scull .. or as on the video, an LED buried inside with the magnet, providing a "magic blue spot of full energy".

To make it harder and more fun, GB101LMR "Jack" had an enemy, named GB6777LMR "Ghost", that was trying to push him off track.

I would love to have made many more creatures and functions, score count and rumble on joystick, monsters that coordinated attacks via radio, "The big chestnut-scanner", that would have to accept a chestnut to let one inside the other half of the track etc..

It's very easy to get good ideas from old computergames for this, and it's actually really addictive to play, so I recommend you to copy the setup, make "a computer game" with robots, it's fun!

This one is RC-controlled, via a hacked old cheap RC-toy, that hooks up to the Microcontroller instead of as originally the RC cars wheels. Microcontroller then steers the action from there, it could not be simpler.

One reason that I could make these 2 robots that fast, including AmandaLDR and that kind, was that I was using parts from old robots. Maybe you also have an old robot that could be turned into a game? :)