How to make robots at home. How to make a robot at home: a step by step plan of action

Electronics lovers, people interested in robotics do not miss the opportunity to design a simple or complex robot on their own, enjoy the assembly process itself and the result.

There is not always time and desire to clean the house, but modern technology allow you to create cleaning robots. These include a vacuum cleaner robot that travels around the rooms for hours and collects dust.

Where to start if you want to create a robot with your own hands? Of course, the first robots should be easy to create. The robot, which will be discussed in today's article, will not take much time and does not require special skills.

Continuing the theme of creating robots with your own hands, I suggest trying to make a dancing robot from improvised means. To create a robot with your own hands you will need simple materials, which can be found in almost every home.

The variety of robots is not limited to the specific templates from which these robots are created. People always come up with original interesting ideas how to make a robot. Some create static robot sculptures, others create dynamic robot sculptures, which will be discussed in today's article.

Anyone, even a child, can make a robot with their own hands. The robot, which will be described below, is easy to create and does not require much time. I will try to give a description of the stages of creating a robot with my own hands.

Sometimes the ideas of creating a robot come quite unexpectedly. If you think about how to make a robot move from improvised means, the thought of batteries arises. But what if everything is much simpler and more accessible? Let's try to make a robot with our own hands using mobile phone as the main part. To create a vibro robot with your own hands, you will need the following materials:

You can create a robot with your own hands from anything. For example, the Belvedere robot, authored by Andrew Wolff, is based on a vacuum cleaner robot. The main use of the robot is to keep the Andrew family and guests entertained.

Knowing the principles of creating robots from improvised means, anyone, even a child, can make a simple robot. For example, the robot from the CD, which will be discussed in this article, was made by a child.

In an age of innovation, robots are no longer outlandish machines. However, you will probably be surprised: Can a robot be made at home?

Undoubtedly, it is quite difficult to create a robot with a complex design, microelements, circuits and programs. And one cannot do without knowledge of physics, mechanics, electronics and programming. However, the simplest robot can be made by hand.

Robot- a machine that must automatically perform any action. But for a homemade robot, the easier task is to move.

Consider 2 simplest options for creating a robot.

1. Let's make little bug which will vibrate. We will need:

motor from a children's car,
lithium battery CR2032 (tablet);
battery holder,
paperclips,
insulating tape,
soldering iron,
Light-emitting diode.

We wrap the LED with electrical tape, leaving its ends free. Using a soldering iron, solder the end of the LED and the back of the battery holder. Solder the other wire of the LED to the motor contacts. We unbend the paper clips, they will be the paws of the bug. We solder the paws to the motor. The paws can be wrapped with electrical tape, so the robotic beetle will be more stable. The wires of the battery holder must be connected to the wires of the motor. As soon as the lithium battery is installed in the holder, the beetle will begin to vibrate and move. Watch the video on creating such a simple robot below.

2. Making a robot artist. We will need:

plastic or cardboard
motor from a children's car,
lithium battery CR2032,
3 markers,
tape, foil,
glue.

From plastic or cardboard, it is necessary to cut out a shape for the future robot - a three-dimensional triangle. A hole is cut in the center into which the motor is inserted. From 3 edges, 3 holes are cut out, where felt-tip pens are inserted. A battery is attached to the motor wire using glue with pieces of foil. The motor is inserted into the hole in the body of the robot, fixed there with glue or electrical tape. The second motor wire is connected to the battery. And the robot artist starts to move!

Today we will tell you how to make a robot from improvised means. The resulting "high-tech android", although it will small size and is unlikely to be able to help you with the housework, but will certainly amuse both children and adults.

Necessary materials
In order to make a robot with your own hands, you do not need knowledge nuclear physics. This can be done at home from ordinary materials that are constantly at hand. So what we need:

2 pieces of wire
1 motor
1 AA battery
3 pushpins
2 pieces of foam board or similar material
2-3 heads of old toothbrushes or a few paperclips

1. Attach the battery to the motor
Using a glue gun, attach a piece of foam board to the motor housing. Then glue the battery to it.

2. Destabilizer
This step may seem confusing. However, to make a robot, you need to make it move. We put a small oblong piece of foam board on the motor axis and fix it with glue gun. This design will give the motor an imbalance, which will set the entire robot in motion.

At the very end of the destabilizer, put a couple of drops of glue, or attach some decorative element- this will add individuality to our creation and increase the amplitude of its movements.

3. Legs
Now you need to equip the robot with lower limbs. If you use toothbrush heads for this, glue them to the bottom of the motor. As a layer, you can use the same foam board.

4. Wires
The next step is to attach our two pieces of wire to the contacts of the motor. You can just screw them on, but soldering them is even better, this will make the robot more durable.

5. Battery connection
Using a heat gun, glue the wire to one end of the battery. You can choose any of the two wires and either side of the battery - polarity does not matter in this case. If you're good at soldering, you can also use solder instead of glue for this step.

6. Eyes
As the eyes of the robot, a pair of beads is quite suitable, which we attach with hot glue to one of the ends of the battery. At this step, you can show your imagination and come up with appearance eyes at your discretion.

7. Launch
Now let's bring our craft to life. Take the free end of the wire and attach it to the unoccupied battery terminal with duct tape. Do not use hot melt adhesive for this step, because it will not allow you to turn off the motor if necessary.

The robot is ready!

Here's what ours might look like. homemade robot if you show more imagination:

And finally a video:

According to techcult

I dug up an interesting article about how to make a robot yourself from simple parts. The explanations are not very clear. I left the pictures, and corrected the explanations a little.

First, look at the first picture - what you should get after an hour of work. Well, or a little more. In any case, anyone can handle Sunday.

What we need to build such a robot:

Matchbox.
Two wheels with old toy, or two corks from a plastic bottle.
Two motors (preferably the same power and voltage).
Switch.
Front third wheel, it can be taken from an old toy or a plastic bottle.
The LED can be taken at will, since in this model it does not really matter.
Two galvanic cells of one and a half volts - two batteries of 1.5 V
Insulating tape

Two motors are taken because the motors always have an axis on one side only. And it's easier to take two motors than to knock the axle out of the motor and replace it with a longer one so that it comes out from both sides of the motor. Although in principle, it is quite possible. Then the second motor is not needed.

Switch any two positions: on / off. If you put the switch more complicated, you can make the robot move both forward and backward by switching the polarity of the batteries.

You can do without a switch at all and just twist the wires so that the robot goes.

You can take both AA and AAA batteries, they are a little smaller, but also easier - the robot will move faster, although AAA batteries will run out faster.

It is better to connect the LED through a 20-50 ohm limiting resistor and make it in the form of a headlight, in front. Or like a beacon - on top of the robot. You can connect two LEDs - they will be like "eyes".

Instead of duct tape, you can take scotch tape - no difference.

How to make a robot - step by step instructions.

We need wheels or, in their absence, attach covers from plastic bottles. You can do this with glue, or by pressing the head into the hole. You can use a soldering iron - it will be better to hold on.

Plastic bottles are most often made of polyethylene; you cannot glue them with ordinary glue. A glue gun works great.

I remind you that it is better to take the same wheels and motors. Otherwise, the robot will not drive straight. In the picture, the motors are different and this robot is unlikely to drive in a straight line, most likely in circles.

Now, using adhesive tape, you need to attach one of the motors to the matchbox. The mount should be only half the size of the box, since there will also be a second motor on the other side.

We cling with electrical tape to the second motor with a wheel on the other side of the box.

Since our motors are located at the bottom of the matchbox, the batteries must be placed on the top, naturally fastening everything with adhesive tape. Also add a switch.

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. The most successful, I think, are the tracks that are used in tanks, 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. Let's look at 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

Not less than important component in our robot is a 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 sensors on it. 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.

Conclusion

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 - battery charge level, distance to an 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:

/***************************************************** **** Firmware for the robot MK type: ATmega16 Clock frequency: 16.000000 MHz If you have a different quartz frequency, then you need to specify this in the environment settings: Project -> Configure -> "C Compiler" tab ****** ****************************************************/ #include #include void main(void) ( //Set ports for input //Through these ports we receive signals from sensors DDRB=0x00; //Turn on pull-up resistors PORTB=0xFF; //Set ports for output //Through these ports we control DDRC motors =0xFF; //Main loop of the program. Here we read the values from the sensors //and control the motors while (1) ( //Move forward PORTC.0 = 1; PORTC.1 = 0; PORTC.2 = 1; PORTC.3 = 0; if (!(PINB & (1<About my robot

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).