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The RobotShop Rover was largely created as an exercise in integration and when it was first released in 2009 there were not many commercial Arduino-based mobile rovers on the market. We wanted to make a mobile platform which incorporated both drive and servo motors, sensors, and was programmable using an Arduino. We also set out to keep the retail price between about $200 to $300.

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It takes 14 steps, a Prusa i3 3D printer and a lot of soldering to build Spider Robot v3.0, a quad robot running on Arduino Pro Mini.  That’s what told us  RegisHsu, a maker who shared his project’s tutorial on Instructables and the 3d printable files on Thingiverse.

It took 12 months of work to build the robot and it reached the fourth generation of  design, that you can explore on his blog  if you are interested in its history:

This is my first project for the 4 legs robot and it took me about 1 year development.
It is a robot that relies on calculations to position servos and pre-programmed sequences of legs. I’m doing this is because of it could be fun and educational for 3D design/printing and robot control.

The robot allows cool customizations like adding IR detection:

[Russel Munro] decided to go all-out for his son’s birthday cake: he made a Transformers robot cake that, well, transforms from a truck into a robot, Optimus Prime style. His impressive build has the actions of the original: first, the front rears up to lift the head, then the back lifts to form the body and the head and arms pop out of the top. Underneath the thin fondant exterior is a 3D printed body, driven by a mechanism in the base. He used fishing line to lift the parts, which is pulled by a motor salvaged from a CD player, being driven by an EasyDriver board from Sparkfun.

The main issue he had to overcome was weight: apparently he underestimated the weight of the fondant that covers the cake, and had to do some last-minute work to strengthen the drive mechanism, and skip plans for the more ornately decorated version that his wife had planned. But the look of glee on his son’s face when he operates it at the party is the best bit. In these days of CGI and computer games, it is good to remind the kids that there is still a lot of fun to be found in ingenuity and liberal quantities of hot glue.

Artist David Cranmer's "Stakcgrox" is a 3.5 meter tall robotic crow with a rotating head and glowing eyes that shoot lasers.

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The post Giant Fog-Breathing Robotic Crow Shoots Lasers appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

This project is part 4 in the building a robot arm tutorial. In the first part I show how to design the arm, the second part shows how to design the base, and the third shows how to design the mount. After all of the Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) and 3D modeling […]

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The post Building a Robot Arm Part 4: Adding Control with an Arduino appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

You’ve amassed a small fortune in diamonds, wood, coal, iron, food, and the other resources you need. You’ve spent hours building the perfect Minecraft fortress to stockpile your goods. But who will watch your stash while you’re on another server? In this project guide, you’ll learn to use Arduino coding […]

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The post Minecraft Activated Arduino Alarm appeared first on Make:.

You’ve amassed a small fortune in diamonds, wood, coal, iron, food, and the other resources you need. You’ve spent hours building the perfect Minecraft fortress to stockpile your goods. But who will watch your stash while you’re on another server? In this project guide, you’ll learn to use Arduino coding […]

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The post Minecraft Activated Arduino Alarm appeared first on Make:.

Wheeled and tracked robots are easy mode, and thanks to some helpful online tutorials for inverse kinematics, building quadruped, hexapod, and octopod robots is getting easier and easier. [deshipu] came up with what is probably the simplest quadruped robot ever. It’s designed to be a walking robot that’s as cheap and as simple to build as possible.

The biggest problem with walking robots is simply the frame. Where a wheeled robot is basically a model car, a walking robot needs legs, joints, and a sturdy frame to attach everything to. While there are laser cut hexapod frames out there, [deshipu]’s Tote robot uses servos for most of the skeleton. The servos are connected to each other by servo horns and screws.

The electronics are based on an Arduino Pro Mini, with a PCB for turning the Arduino’s pins into servo headers. Other than that, a 1000uF cap keeps brownouts from happening, and a 1S LiPo cell provides the power.

Electronics are easy, and the inverse kinematics and walking algorithms aren’t. For that, [deshipu] has a few tutorials for these topics. It’s a very complete guide to building a quadruped robot, but it’s still a work in progress. That’s okay, because [deshipu] says it will probably remain a work in progress until every kid on Earth builds one.

After you had an introduction to Intel Edison  following the Getting Started guide, and our previous tutorial, the Intel Edison mini-breakout Getting Started Guide, it’s now time to work on something a bit more complex. You’ll be also able to play a bit with Node.js,  a programming platform that runs on javascript and a good choice for building a web-based application. It is supported by the Intel® Edison standard system image so you can run node.js scripts directly on it.

He shoots! He scores! The crowd goes wild! Let’s build a robot that plays basketball with you. This tutorial is a step-by-step guide for a simple and small differential-drive robot that uses the Intel Edison. You’ll get to know a few more tricks on how to use Mini Breakout Kit and set up a node.js server for the communication.

Go and follow the steps to build it