The Importance of Making Silly Things
Written by Isabel
A short side project I did over a couple days, was a little 3D printed robot I named TAD (or tiny annoying dude after the amount of pain he caused). The intention was to re-familiarize myself with Ultimaker and Arduino before I got started on my InMoov project (see my previous blog post). I got the tutorial and STL files online but it ended up being more of a struggle than expected. This walking robot consists of a basic 3D printed body, 2 standard servos, an Arduino, and pencils for legs.
The print turned out fine except the support was pain to remove from all the nooks and crannies. However, the servos didn’t fit in the designated holes. I guess the random servos I had lying around weren’t quite the right size for this robot. I didn’t want to edit the .stl and reprint, and I was much too lazy to spend the time needed to sand the part to size, so I ended up taking a soldering iron and melting away the parts until the servos fit. The structure was very basic so once everything fit, it was a quick assembly.
I threw together a simple circuit with the servos, an Arduino Micro, a 9V battery and an on/off switch. I also fashioned a very home-made battery connection with some copper tape since I couldn't find a battery clip. After connecting to the Arduino I found out the provided code didn’t work in the slightest. It didn’t use the front legs and seemed to attempt to walk by just wiggling the back legs back and forth. Why design the front legs to move and then not use them? A few minutes of experimentation and I produced the clumsy, limping walk you see below. The final hurdle to overcome was that since I’m using old servos I found laying around, the axle of one of them was off! I compensated by giving TAD a little platform shoe on his back left foot, and voila! TAD was born. Overall a fun “1 hour” build that’s good to learn about 3D printing, Arduino, and troubleshooting!
While this little robot may seemly have zero value in my job, the process of creating silly and/or fun little projects I find extremely important. I'm a big fan of Simone Giertz (the Queen of Shitty Robots) and she has a similar viewpoint. If you limit yourself to only creating "useful" things, then you miss out on many opportunities to learn, grow your skillset, and possibly happen upon something awesome that you would never have thought of otherwise. Take our Rubik’s Cube robot for example. On the surface it may seem like a silly project. But from this initial idea, we were able to create a very nice showcase that demonstrates robotics and digital twins in a way that is easy to understand for even the most non-technical person. While TAD himself has no real "value" to my work, I was able to practice, and fail at, many different prototyping processes before undertaking a much larger project with much higher stakes. Besides, TAD can always add value if I tape X-acto knife to his head and turn him in the direction of someone I don't want in my MakerSpace. This weaponised bot is extremely dangerous to intruders after the 4 hours it takes him to walk across the room.
Thanks Randy Sarafan at Instructables for the original design! http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Robot/
