[Dickel] always liked tracked vehicles. Taking inspiration from the ‘Peacemaker’ tracked vehicle in Mad Max: Fury Road, he replicated it as the Mad Mech. The vehicle is remote-controlled and the tank treads are partly from a VEX robotics tank tread kit. Control is via a DIY wireless controller using an Arduino and NRF24L01 modules. The vehicle itself uses an Arduino UNO with an L298N motor driver. Power is from three Li-Po cells.

The real artistic work is in the body. [Dickel] used a papercraft tool called Pepakura (non-free software, but this Blender plugin is an alternative free approach) for the design to make the body out of thin cardboard. The cardboard design was then modified to make it match the body of the Peacemaker as much as possible. It was coated in fiberglass for strength, then the rest of the work was done with body filler and sanding for a smooth finish. After a few more details and a good paint job, it was ready to roll.

There’s a lot of great effort that went into this build, and [Dickel] shows his work and process on his project page and in the videos embedded below. The first video shows the finished Mad Mech being taken for some test drives. The second is a montage showing key parts of the build process.

Paper and cardboard are very versatile and accessible materials for making things. It’s what was used to do some target practice with this working paper and cardboard gun. With the right techniques foam core can be worked into an astonishing variety of shapes, and we also made a case for the value of a desktop vinyl cutter on any well-equipped hacker’s workbench.

Another Robot, another App(lication) of Arduino. The user [shreks7] built up an Android App for controlling the robot wirelessly and stream live video off an android phone placed on the robot.

The robot has an inbuilt wireless router and two brush-less DC motors and runs on a power source of 26-30V(depends on the requirement) power supply.

The robot streams live video back to the app and can be used for navigation.
Also there is a console for Windows to control the robot and debug it .

It uses Arduino Mega 1280 + Ethernet Shield + Pololu Motor Driver (It is by far the best one i have used) + Belkin Router & Two Android Devices .

There is also a [video] where you can see the robot in action.

These robot cubes, called BOXZ, use an interesting interlocking part design to mount and protect the parts within. But to really make them pop you need to color and apply your own papercraft skins.

The actual hardware is quite simple. They’ve used an Arduino, along with motor driver and Bluetooth shields, to control a set of geared DC motors. There’s a battery pack which holds four AA cells and a pair of servo motors which seem to be there to act as arms. This base can then be adorned with sensors to add functionality (line following, wall following, obstacle avoidance, etc.).

Despite the simple appearance of the cube, the chassis is the most complicated part. It uses sixteen pieces of acrylic, but they may also be hand cut from cardboard by printing out templates and gluing them onto the material. The parts are designed with interlocking tabs which we often see used on laser-cut wooden box parts.

We’ve embedded the video presentation of BOXZ after the break.

Primary image

Introducing the latest creation from B.O.T, the SWARMµBOT. An Arduino-Compatible educational micro-bot with all sensors required for applications such as Line-Following, Maze Solving, And Swarming! With a Atmega328 running an Arduino-compatible bootloader, and an integrated USB-UART bridge, programming this bot is as easy as connecting a USB cable, and hitting upload.

read more