Building a robot on your own is an excellent way to learn new knowledge and skills in the field of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Aside from gaining new knowledge and skills, it’s also a fun, engaging, and challenging activity to pass your time.
If you’re someone who thinks building robots is cool, stop wasting your time and start realizing your robotics project now. For beginners, building a robot is not really as hard as you think.
Today, you can find a wide range of robotics kits and materials that can introduce you to the basics of building a robot. So, express your creativity and have fun with this list of simple robotics projects that you can do in the comfort of your home.
Six-Legged Robot for Rough Terrain Missions
Although multiple-legged robots can be quite slow and hard to control, they have one ultimate advantage: durability in rough terrain operations. They have the ability to traverse rocky grounds and cross large holes. Such robots can also function even if they lose a leg.
Building a six-legged robot requires you to have an acrylic material for its body and an Arduino microcontroller to control its movements. For coordinated leg movements and better control, it’s necessary to develop logical algorithms.
You also need to equip it with 12 servos and five ultrasonic range finders to make the robot see the objects in its surroundings and keep the bot in a defined range.
Voice-Controlled Robot
Voice-controlled robots provide a new dimension of interaction between robots and humans. For people with disabilities and impaired eyesight, these robots can help them make their everyday lives more convenient. With the use of sound, you won’t need to have remote controls to operate this type of robots.
DC motors and Arduino board power this voice-controlled bot. Using a smartphone app, you can control the robot via Bluetooth connected on the Arduino board. The app is developed to convert voice command to text and transfer it to the connected Bluetooth device.
Every time the transferred text matches with the pre-programmed words of the microcontroller, the Arduino carries out the command.
Robotic Vehicle That Can Detect Metals
Metal-detecting robotic vehicles are typically used by police and military to detect land mines. This type of robots can ensure human safety as it can be controlled from afar and doesn’t need a human driver.
The bot has a metal detector with a buzzer attached to the robotic circuit, and it uses radiofrequency or RF communication for control. A set of push buttons at the transmitter end is interfaced to the microcontroller. If you press a button, it sends a command to the microcontroller which transmits binary code to the switch.
The encoder converts parallel data to serial form, and the command is transmitted via the RF module. Then, a decoder at the receiver end decodes the command. The microcontroller provides signals to the motor driver to move the robotic vehicle according to the command.
Line Follower Robot
This robot vehicle is designed to follow a particular line on which it moves. The line can be anything from a black lane on a magnetic field or a white surface. Today, this type of bots is popularly used to guide automatic vehicles.
The simple line-following robot has a DC supply and two motors controlled via a transistor which serves as a switch. It’s also equipped with a set of sensors comprised of IR LEDs and photodiodes attached under the circuit.
The sensors detect the white surface and execute the given rotation. Then, when one of the motors encounter the colored line on the surface, it will stop to rotate according to the signal from the sensor.
Since the sensors have IR LEDs, it also has a purpose of generating light on the surface and reflecting it. When the photodiode catches the reflected light, it lowers its resistance to control the conduction of the motor switch.
If you want to learn further on how to build an advanced line follower robot, you can visit robots.net to read guides and tips for the project.
Fire-Extinguishing Robot
Although the discovery of fire by early humans is a great help to the advancement of human life and civilization, neglect of it had caused deaths and property damages over the years. Thus, a robot that can detect and extinguish fires is what we need to prevent and fight fire incidents.
This type of robot does an excellent job for detecting and extinguishing fires using flame sensors like UVTron, a water tank, and pump. It also has IR sensors that can detect obstacles, such as walls and doors, along the way. DC motors enable you to control this fire-extinguishing robot.
Robotic Arm Controlled By Hand Motion
This robotic arm doesn’t need joysticks and buttons as it uses the operator’s very own hand motion to control the bot. This intuitive technology is the latest trend in the capacity of remote controls to operate devices.
The robotic arm controlled by hand motion has gyroscope and bend sensors attached to the glove which sense the movement of the operator’s hand. A microcontroller converts the sensed motion into the action of servos. There are also touch sensors that provide haptic feedback, allowing the user to feel when the device has touched an object.
Spy Robot with Night Vision Camera
This spy robot can capture images in dark places using a night vision camera and send them wirelessly to a TV or computer monitor. You can control it using RF communication with a number of push buttons. This bot is an excellent device for military use, such as spying on enemy lands and sending the data to a control unit.
Takeaway
If you want to build a robot, it’s advisable to start on a simple robotics project. In this way, you can learn the basics of engineering, coding, and designing a robot. The simple robotics project listed above is an excellent start for you on this endeavor. You can even start doing them in your home.
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