How to make a robot at home so that everything works out? You need to start simple and gradually complicate! Instructions for creating robots with your own hands at home literally flooded the Internet. The author of the article will not remain aloof from this either. In general, this process can be divided into three parts: theoretical, preparatory and assembly itself. Within the framework of the article, all of them will be considered, and the general scheme for developing a cleaner will be described.
Building a robot at home
To develop from scratch, you need knowledge about current, voltage, the functioning of various elements such as flip-flops, capacitors, resistors, transistors. You should also learn how to solder all this on the diagrams and use the connecting wires. It is necessary to work out every aspect of the movement and execution of actions, achieving the maximum detail of actions to achieve your goal. And this knowledge is necessary if you are really interested in how to make a robot at home, and not just idle curiosity.
Preparatory processes
Before you start figuring out how to make a robot at home, you need to take good care of the conditions in which it will be assembled. First you need to prepare a workplace where the desired device will be created. It is necessary to place the structure itself and its constituent parts somewhere. You should also consider the issue of convenient placement of the soldering iron, rosin and solder. Workplace should be as optimized as possible so that it provides convenience when interacting with the design.
Assembly
It is necessary to think over the "backbone" of the structure on which everything will be built. Usually one part is chosen, and all the others are already soldered to it. Speaking about the quality of soldering, it should be said that the places where it will be carried out must be cleaned. Also, depending on the thickness of the wires and legs used, it is necessary to select a sufficient amount of solder so that the elements do not fall off during operation. To simplify the processes of signal transmission and prevent the possibility of a short circuit, it can be etched. Then all necessary elements, the resulting design is connected to a power source and, if necessary, the device is finalized.
simple robot
How to make something easy at home? Also, is it useful? It is necessary to keep your house clean, and it is desirable to automate this process. Of course, it is difficult to create a full-fledged cleaning robot, but the minimum design that will ensure the collection of dust from the floors of rooms is quite possible. To be honest, it will be considered who works in one place and at the same time removes small debris located in the deployment area. To create such a design, you must have the following materials:
- Plastic plate.
- Three small brushes that are used to clean shoes or the floor.
- Two fans that can be taken from obsolete computers.
- 9V battery and connector for it.
- Coupler or clamps that can snap into place on their own.
- Bolts and nuts.
Drill holes for the brushes at equal distances. Attach them. It is desirable that all brushes are placed at an equal distance from the others and the center of the plate. Using bolts and nuts, an adjusting mount should be attached to each of them, and they themselves are fixed with their help. The sliders of the adjusting fasteners should be set to the middle position. For movement we will use fans. We connect them to the battery and place them in parallel so that they ensure the rotation of the robot in a circle. This design will be used as a vibration motor. Throw on the terminals and the design is ready for use. If during the cleaning process the robot will move to the side, work with the adjusting fasteners. The design presented in the article does not require significant financial costs or the availability of skills and experience. When creating the robot, we used inexpensive materials, which are not a significant problem to get. If you want to complicate the design and make it purposefully move, you will need improvements in the form of additional motors and microcontrollers. Here's how to make a robot at home. And just think how much you can improve here! The widest field for design activity.
Usually we talk about robots created by various research centers or companies. However, robots are being assembled around the world with varying degrees of success. ordinary people. So, today we bring you ten homemade robots.
Adam
A German neuroscience student assembled an android named Adam. Its name stands for Advanced Dual Arm Manipulator or "advanced two-handed manipulator". The robot's arms have five degrees of freedom. They are driven by the Robolink joints of the German company Igus. External cables are used to rotate Adam's joints. In addition, two video cameras, a loudspeaker, a speech synthesizer, and an LCD panel that simulates the movements of the robot's lips are installed on Adam's head.
MPR-1
The MPR-1 robot is notable for the fact that it is not constructed from iron or plastic, like most of its counterparts, but from paper. According to the creator of the robot, artist Kikousya, the materials for the MPR-1 are paper, a few dowels, and a couple of rubber bands. At the same time, the robot moves confidently, although its mechanical elements are also made of paper. The crank mechanism provides the movement of the legs of the robot, and its feet are designed so that their surface is always parallel to the floor.
Robot Paparazzi Boxie
The Boxie robot was created by American engineer Alexander Reben from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boxie, who looks somewhat like the hero of the well-known cartoon Wall-E, must help the media. The small and nimble paparazzi is completely made of cardboard, he moves with the help of caterpillars, and navigates the street using ultrasound, which helps him overcome various obstacles. The robot takes the interview in a funny childish voice, and the respondent can interrupt the conversation at any time by pressing a special button. Boxie can record up to six hours of video and send it to its owner using the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot.
Morphex
Norwegian engineer Kare Halvorsen has created a six-legged Morphex robot that can turn into a ball and back. In addition, the robot is able to move. The movement of the robot is due to the motors pushing it forward. The robot moves in an arc, not a straight line. Due to its design, Morphex cannot independently correct the trajectory of its movement. IN this moment Halvorsen is working to resolve this issue. An interesting update is coming: the creator of the robot wants to add 36 LEDs that would allow Morphex to change colors.
truckbot
Americans Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman decided to create a small robot based on android phone. The Truckbot robot they created is quite simple in terms of its design: the HTC G1 phone is on top of the robot, being its “brain”. At the moment, the robot can move around flat surface, choose the direction of movement and accompany with all sorts of phrases collision with obstacles.
Robot shareholder
Once an American, Brian Dory, who develops expansion boards, faced the following problem: it is very difficult to solder a two-row pin comb with your own hands. Brian needed an assistant, so he decided to create a robot that could solder. It took Brian two months to develop the robot. The made robot is equipped with two soldering irons that can solder two rows of contacts at the same time. You can control the robot through a PC and a tablet.
Mechatronic Tank
Every family has its favorite hobby. For example, in the family of the American engineer Robert Beatty, they construct robots. Robert is helped by his teenage daughters, and his wife and newborn daughter provide them with moral support. Their most impressive creation is the self-propelled Mechatronic Tank. With 20 kg of armor, this security robot is a threat to any criminal. Eight sonar mounted on the robot's tower allow it to calculate the distance to objects in its field of view to within an inch. The robot also shoots metal bullets at a speed of a thousand rounds per minute.
robot dog
An American named Max created a mini-copy of the famous. Max made the supporting structure of the robot from scraps of a five-millimeter acrylic glass, and to fasten all parts together he used ordinary threaded bolts. In addition, when creating the robot, miniature servos were used that are responsible for the movement of its limbs, as well as parts from the Arduino Mega kit, which coordinate the motor process of a mechanical dog.
robot ball
The gingerbread robot was designed by Jerome Demers, it works on solar panels. There is a capacitor inside the robot that is connected to the solar powered parts. It is needed to accumulate energy in bad weather. When solar energy enough, the ball starts to roll forward.
Roboarm
Initially, Georgia Institute of Technology professor Gil Weinberg designed a robotic arm for a drummer whose arm had been amputated. Jill then created an automated timing technology that would allow a two-armed drummer to use his robotic arm as a extra hand. Robohand reacts to the way the drummer plays, creating its own rhythm. The robotic arm also knows how to improvise, while analyzing the rhythm in which the drummer plays.
On the shelves of modern stores for children you can find a large number of variety of toys. And every child asks his parents to buy him this or that toy "new thing". And if this is not included in family budget planning? In order to save money, you can try to make a new toy yourself. For example, how to make a robot at home, is it possible? Yes, it is quite possible, it is enough to prepare the necessary materials.
Can I assemble the robot myself?
Now it is difficult to surprise someone with a robot toy. Modern technological and computer industry stepped far ahead. But still, you may be surprised by the information on how to make a simple robot at home.
Undoubtedly, it is difficult to understand the principle of operation of various microcircuits, electronics, programs and designs. It is difficult to do in this case without basic knowledge in the field of physics, programming and electronics. Even despite this, each person is able to assemble a robot on their own.
A robot is an automated machine that can perform various activities. In the case of a homemade robot, it is enough that the machine simply moves.
Improvised tools will help facilitate assembly: a handset, plastic bottle or a plate, a toothbrush, an old camera or a computer mouse.
vibrating bug
How to do little robot? At home, you can make the simplest option vibrating beetle. You need to stock up on the following materials:
- motor from an old children's car;
- a lithium battery of the CR-2032 series, similar to a tablet;
- holder for this very tablet;
- paperclips;
- electrical tape;
- soldering iron;
- LED.
First you need to wrap the LED with electrical tape, while leaving free ends. We solder one LED end with a soldering iron back wall battery holder. We solder the remaining tip with the contact of the motor from the machine. The paper clips will serve as paws for the vibrating bug. The wires from the battery holder are connected to the motor wires. The bug will vibrate and move after the holder contacts the battery itself.
Brushbot - child's play
So, how to make a mini robot at home? A funny car can be assembled from improvised materials, such as a toothbrush (head), double-sided tape and a vibration motor from an old mobile phone. It is enough to glue the motor to the brush head, and that's it - the robot is ready.
Power supply will appear thanks to a flat battery. For remote control will have to come up with something.
cardboard robot
How to make a robot at home if a child requires it? Can you think of interesting toy from plain cardboard.
Need to stock up:
- two cardboard boxes;
- 20 caps from plastic bottles;
- wire;
- tape.
It happens that dad wants to make some kind of curiosity for the baby, but nothing sensible comes to mind. Therefore, you can think about how to make a real robot at home.
First you need to use the box as a body for the robot and cut out the bottom of it. Then you need to make 5 holes: for the head, for the arms and legs. In the box intended for the head, you need to make one hole, which will help connect it to the body. Wire is used to fasten the parts of the robot.
After attaching the head, you need to think about how to make a robot arm at home. To do this, a wire is inserted into the side holes, on which they are put on. plastic lids. We get movable hands. We do the same with the legs. You can make holes in the lids with an awl.
For the stability of the cardboard robot, close attention must be paid to the cuts. It is they who give the toy a good appearance. It is difficult to connect all the parts with the wrong cut line.
If you decide to glue the boxes together, then do not overdo it with the amount of glue. It is better to use durable cardboard or paper.
The simplest robot
How to do light robot at home? It is difficult to create a full-fledged automated machine, but minimum design can still be collected. Consider simplest mechanism, which, for example, will be able to perform certain actions in one zone. You will need the following materials:
Plastic plate.
A pair of medium-sized brushes for cleaning shoes.
Computer fans in the amount of two pieces.
9-volt battery connector and battery itself.
Collar and coupler with snap-in function.
We drill two holes with the same distance in the brush plate. We fasten them. Brushes should be located at the same distance from each other and the middle of the plate. Using nuts, we attach an adjusting mount to the brushes. In the middle location, install the sliders from the mounts. For robot movements, you need to use computer fans. They are connected to a battery and placed in parallel to keep the machine spinning. It will be some kind of vibration motor. Finally, you need to throw the terminals.
In this case, it will not require large financial costs or any technical or computer experience, because it describes in detail how to make a robot at home. Get it necessary details not difficult. To improve the motor functions of the structure, microcontrollers or additional motors can be used.
Robot as advertised
Probably, many people are familiar with the commercial of the browser, in which the main character is a small robot spinning and drawing figures on paper with felt-tip pens. How to make a robot at home from this advertisement? Yes, very simple. To create such an automated cute toy, you need to stock up:
- three markers;
- thick cardboard or plastic;
- motor;
- round battery;
- foil or electrical tape;
- glue.
So, we create a form for the robot from plastic or cardboard (more precisely, we cut it out). It is necessary to make a triangular shape with rounded corners. In each corner we make a small hole into which a felt-tip pen can crawl. We make one hole near the center of the triangle for the motor. We get 4 holes around the entire perimeter of a triangular shape.
Then we insert the felt-tip pens in turn into the holes made. A battery must be attached to the motor. This can be done with glue and foil or electrical tape. In order for the motor to hold firmly on the robot, it is necessary to fix it with a small amount of glue.
The robot will move only after attaching the second wiring to the fixed battery.
Robot from Lego
"Lego" - a series of toys for children, which consists mainly of parts of the designer, combined into one element. Details can be combined, while creating more and more new items for games.
Almost all children from 3 to 10 years old love to collect such a designer. In particular, children's interest increases if a robot can be assembled from parts. So, in order to assemble a Lego moving robot, you need to prepare the parts, as well as a miniature motor and control unit.
In addition, ready-made kits with parts are now being sold, allowing you to assemble any robot yourself. The main thing is to master the attached instructions. Eg:
- prepare the parts as indicated in the instructions;
- fasten the wheels, if any;
- we collect fasteners that will serve as support for the motor;
- we insert a battery or even several into a special block;
- install the engine;
- connect it to the motor;
- we load a special program into the design memory that allows you to control the toy.
It would seem that it is quite difficult to assemble a robot, and a person without certain knowledge will not succeed at all. But it's not. Of course, it is difficult to build a full-fledged automated machine, but everyone can do the simplest option. It is enough to read our article on how to make a robot at home.
Make a robot very simple Let's see what it takes to create a robot at home, in order to understand the basics of robotics.
Surely, after watching movies about robots, you often wanted to build your comrade in arms, but you didn’t know where to start. Of course, you will not be able to build a bipedal terminator, but we do not aim for this. Anyone who knows how to properly hold a soldering iron in their hands can assemble a simple robot and this does not require deep knowledge, although they will not interfere. Amateur robotics is not much different from circuit engineering, only much more interesting, because areas such as mechanics and programming are also affected here. All components are readily available and are not that expensive. So progress does not stand still, and we will use it to our advantage.
Introduction
So. What is a robot? In most cases this automatic device, which reacts to any actions environment. Robots can be controlled by a human or perform pre-programmed actions. Typically, the robot has a variety of sensors (distance, rotation angle, acceleration), video cameras, manipulators. The electronic part of the robot consists of a microcontroller (MC) - a microcircuit that contains a processor, a clock generator, various peripherals, RAM and permanent memory. There are a huge number of different microcontrollers in the world for different applications, and powerful robots can be assembled on their basis. For amateur buildings, AVR microcontrollers are widely used. They are by far the most accessible and on the Internet you can find many examples based on these MKs. To work with microcontrollers you need to be able to program in assembler or C and have a basic knowledge of digital and analog electronics. In our project, we will use C. Programming for MK is not much different from programming on a computer, the syntax of the language is the same, most of the functions are practically the same, and the new ones are quite easy to learn and convenient to use.
What do we need
To begin with, our robot will be able to simply go around obstacles, that is, repeat the normal behavior of most animals in nature. Everything we need to build such a robot can be found in radio engineering stores. Let's decide how our robot will move. I consider the tracks that are used in tanks to be the most successful, this is the most convenient solution, because the tracks have a greater cross-country ability than the wheels of the car and it is more convenient to control them (to turn, it is enough to rotate the tracks in different directions). Therefore, you will need any toy tank that has tracks that rotate independently of each other, you can buy one at any toy store for a reasonable price. From this tank, you only need a platform with tracks and motors with gearboxes, you can safely unscrew the rest and throw it away. We also need a microcontroller, my choice fell on the ATmega16 - it has enough ports for connecting sensors and peripherals, and in general it is quite convenient. You will also need to buy some radio components, a soldering iron, a multimeter.
Making a board with MK
In our case, the microcontroller will perform the functions of the brain, but we will not start with it, but with the power supply of the robot's brain. Proper nutrition is a guarantee of health, so we will start with how to properly feed our robot, because novice robot builders usually make mistakes on this. And in order for our robot to work normally, you need to use a voltage stabilizer. I prefer the L7805 chip - it is designed to output a stable voltage of 5V, which is what our microcontroller needs. But due to the fact that the voltage drop on this chip is about 2.5V, a minimum of 7.5V must be supplied to it. Together with this stabilizer, electrolytic capacitors are used to smooth out voltage ripples and a diode must be included in the circuit to protect against polarity reversal.
Now we can work on our microcontroller. The case of the MK is DIP (it’s more convenient to solder) and has forty pins. On board there is an ADC, PWM, USART and many other things that we will not use for now. Consider a few important nodes. The RESET output (the 9th leg of the MK) is pulled up by the resistor R1 to the "plus" of the power source - this must be done! Otherwise, your MK may unintentionally reset or, in other words, fail. It is also desirable, but not mandatory, to connect RESET through ceramic capacitor C1 to ground. In the diagram, you can also see a 1000 uF electrolyte, it saves you from voltage drops when the engines are running, which will also have a positive effect on the operation of the microcontroller. Crystal resonator X1 and capacitors C2, C3 should be placed as close as possible to the XTAL1 and XTAL2 pins.
I won’t talk about how to flash MK, since you can read about it on the Internet. We will write the program in C, I chose CodeVisionAVR as the programming environment. It's quite a handy environment and useful for beginners because it has a built-in code generation wizard.
Motor control
An equally important component in our robot is the motor driver, which makes it easier for us to control it. Never and under no circumstances should motors be connected directly to the MK! In general, powerful loads cannot be controlled directly from the microcontroller, otherwise it will burn out. Use key transistors. For our case, there is a special chip - L293D. In such simple projects, always try to use this particular chip with the “D” index, as it has built-in diodes for overload protection. This chip is very easy to manage and easy to get in radio engineering stores. It is available in two DIP and SOIC packages. We will use in a DIP package because of the ease of mounting on the board. The L293D has separate motor and logic power supplies. Therefore, we will power the microcircuit itself from the stabilizer (VSS input), and the motors directly from batteries (VS input). L293D can withstand a load of 600 mA per channel, and it has two of these channels, that is, two motors can be connected to one microcircuit. But to be on the safe side, we will combine the channels, and then we need one mic for each engine. It follows that the L293D will be able to withstand 1.2 A. To achieve this, you need to combine the legs of the micro, as shown in the diagram. The microcircuit works as follows: when a logical “0” is applied to IN1 and IN2, and a logical unit is applied to IN3 and IN4, the motor rotates in one direction, and if the signals are inverted, a logical zero is applied, then the motor will start to rotate in the opposite direction. Pins EN1 and EN2 are responsible for turning on each channel. We connect them and connect them to the "plus" power supply from the stabilizer. Since the microcircuit heats up during operation, and installing radiators is problematic on this type of case, heat removal is provided by GND legs - it is better to solder them on a wide contact area. That's all you need to know about motor drivers for the first time.
Obstacle sensors
So that our robot can navigate and not crash into everything, we will install two infrared sensor. The simplest sensor consists of an IR diode that emits in the infrared spectrum and a phototransistor that will receive a signal from the IR diode. The principle is this: when there is no obstacle in front of the sensor, the IR rays do not fall on the phototransistor and it does not open. If there is an obstacle in front of the sensor, then the rays from it are reflected and fall on the transistor - it opens and current begins to flow. The disadvantage of such sensors is that they can react differently to various surfaces and are not protected from interference - from extraneous signals from other devices, the sensor may accidentally work. Signal modulation can protect against interference, but for now we will not bother with this. For starters, that's enough.
Robot firmware
To revive the robot, you need to write firmware for it, that is, a program that would take readings from sensors and control engines. My program is the most simple, it does not contain complex structures and everyone will understand. The next two lines include header files for our microcontroller and commands for generating delays:
#include
#include
The following lines are conditional because the PORTC values depend on how you connected the motor driver to your microcontroller:
PORTC.0 = 1; PORTC.1 = 0; PORTC.2 = 1; PORTC.3 = 0; A value of 0xFF means that the output will be a log. "1", and 0x00 is a log. "0". With the following construction, we check if there is an obstacle in front of the robot and on which side it is: if (!(PINB & (1< If light from an IR diode hits the phototransistor, then a log is set on the leg of the microcontroller. "0" and the robot starts moving back to move away from the obstacle, then turns around so as not to collide with the obstacle again and then goes forward again. Since we have two sensors, we check the presence of an obstacle twice - on the right and on the left, and therefore we can find out which side the obstacle is on. The "delay_ms(1000)" command indicates that one second will elapse before the next command starts executing. I have covered most of the aspects that will help you build your first robot. But the robotics doesn't end there. If you assemble this robot, then you will have a lot of opportunities to expand it. You can improve the algorithm of the robot, such as what to do if the obstacle is not on one side, but right in front of the robot. It also does not hurt to install an encoder - a simple device that will help you accurately position and know the location of your robot in space. For clarity, it is possible to install a color or monochrome display that can show useful information - the battery charge level, the distance to the obstacle, various debugging information. The improvement of sensors will not interfere - the installation of TSOP (these are IR receivers that perceive a signal of only a certain frequency) instead of conventional phototransistors. In addition to infrared sensors, there are ultrasonic ones, which are more expensive, and also not without drawbacks, but have recently been gaining popularity among robot builders. In order for the robot to respond to sound, it would be nice to install microphones with an amplifier. But the really interesting thing, I think, is installing the camera and programming machine vision based on it. There is a set of special OpenCV libraries with which you can program face recognition, movements on colored beacons, and a lot of other interesting things. It all depends on your imagination and skills. List of components: ATmega16 in DIP-40 package> L7805 in TO-220 package L293D in DIP-16 package x2 pcs. resistors with a power of 0.25 W with denominations: 10 kOhm x1 pcs., 220 Ohm x4 pcs. ceramic capacitors: 0.1 uF, 1 uF, 22 pF electrolytic capacitors: 1000 uF x 16 V, 220 uF x 16V x2 pcs. diode 1N4001 or 1N4004 16 MHz quartz resonator IR diodes: any in the amount of two pieces will do. phototransistors, also any, but reacting only to the wavelength of IR rays Firmware code: At the moment my robot is almost complete. It has a wireless camera, a distance sensor (both the camera and this sensor are installed on a rotary tower), an obstacle sensor, an encoder, a signal receiver from the remote control and an RS-232 interface for connecting to a computer. It works in two modes: autonomous and manual (receives control signals from the remote control), the camera can also be turned on / off remotely or by the robot itself to save battery power. I am writing a firmware for the protection of the apartment (image transfer to a computer, motion detection, detour of the premises).Conclusion
