Useful Bot-Building References

Karl Lunt's Homepage

Web Site: www.seanet.com/~karllunt

Karl Lunt is well known in the hobby robotics community. He's written numerous articles for Nuts & Volts (see Chapter 11) and has written several books on robots. His home page has a lot of useful information and downloadable software tools for various types of robot microcontrollers.

How Stuff Works

Web Site: www.howstuffworks.com

If you're endlessly curious about how the world works, this site can help feed your engineer's soul. It covers all types of physical world mechanics (cars, electronics, science), and has now branched out to the soft sciences, covering subjects such as government, entertainment, and economics. It's a great place to start your investigations into any newfound interest.

MatWeb

Web Site: www.matweb.com

A materials composition database that has data (density, tensile strength, melting point, electrical properties, and so forth) on pretty much every kind of metal, plastic, composite, and ceramic. You can search on material type, the manufacturer, the trade name, and other variables.

NASA Tech Briefs

Web Site: www.nasatech.com

Since the 1970s, NASA has offered a free monthly magazine to qualified subscribers within the business, scientific, and engineering sectors. Now you can also view the magazine's content, and other materials via its Web site. The idea of Tech Briefs is to share innovations from NASA with the rest of the engineering world. There's a lot of material on lasers, fiber optics, computer-aided design and manufacturing, new materials sciences, and other cutting-edge technologies—and, of course, robots. You can also subscribe to a series of electronic newsletters covering specific technologies.

The Robot Room

Web Site: www.robotroom.com

This site, run by Dave Cook (author of Robot Building for Beginners) is a treasure trove of useful information, inspiring ideas, and robot building tips. Definitely worth a visit.

Robot-Specific Sites

BEAM Online

Web Site: http://www.beam-online.com/

Next to Solarbotics.net, BEAM Online is the site you'll want on your radar if you're interested in keeping up with this fascinating area of robotics. The site offers project tutorials, papers (well, at least one really good one detailing how the common BEAM Bicore circuit works), BEAM schematics, a BEAM FAQ, a robot gallery, and much more. The site also contains a search engine to over 40 BEAM Web sites.

Battlebots

Web Site: http://www.battlebots.com/

If you're interested in combat robotics, especially Battlebots, this site offers some great resources. It has the full Battlebots rules, profiles of builders and their bots, information and rankings for all Battlebot competitions (from Long Beach 1999 to season 4 on Comedy Central), video clips, some robot-building tutorials, and a store of Battlebots-related books, toys, and other goodies. The creators of Battlebots have also started Battlebots IQ, a high school curriculum that uses robotic competition to teach kids about engineering, design, math, logic, and problem solving. Details and sample curricula are available through the Battlebots site.

Honda Humanoid Project

Web Site: world.honda.com/robot/

This official Honda site covers both the P-series robot project and its younger sibling ASIMO. Here you'll find background on the two bots, specs, and movies. The careful reader will notice that on the spec sheets for ASIMO, it says that the "Control Unit" is a wireless connection and the "Operating Section" is a "workstation and portable controller." In other words, a remote brain and a remote control that few people seem to know about. ASIMO is basically a multi-million dollar, high-tech puppet.

Robot Portals

MachineBrain

Web Site: http://www.machinebrain.com/

This site has lots of great links to other sites (in categories such as General Robotics, Fighting Robots, Robot Reference), as well as robot technology news, and even a free classifieds section.

Robot Café

Web Site: http://www.robotcafe.com/

This site is dedicated to all those who "live, eat, breath...robots." Please, people, if you start dining on computer chips and shoving nuts and bolts up your nose, you've got something beyond an exciting hobby interest that you need to have a professional take a look at! The two main features of this site are an excellent directory of online robot resources and a gallery of robots with basic information on each bot and links to the robot builder's Web site (if there is one).
Anyone can register on the site and post bots.

Robots.Net

Web Site: http://www.robots.net/

Probably the most popular robot portal, Robots.Net is frequently updated with cutting-edge tech news, product reviews, how-to articles, and directory listings. It also has a large gallery of robot projects. Its "Robot of the Day" column on the front page is a great way to see what the gallery has to offer.

TechGeek

Web Site: www.techgeek.com

This is another robot site worth regular visits. It offers news, reviews, a really nice project section detailing site members' building efforts, and robot club listings. There is also a big list of resources.

Some Simple Tutorials

1. For projects the most used device is the BREADBOARD. So, you have to konw how to use it properly.

check this tutorial

2. Then comes about the circuitry of microcontroller. Check the "Microcontroller Overview" post & the following tutorial

(click here to download)

How to build a simple solar robot

Things You'll Need:

1. Solar panel
2. Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
3. Motor


Step 1

Connect the solar panel to your PCB via soldering the connections to the diodes, transistor, and the motor.

Step 2

Connect a large circle magnet to the axil of your small DC motor.

Step 3

Glue the magnet in place, and let it dry.

Step 4

The Magnet is the base for your solar powered robot, which will turn to face the direction of the sun. The solar powered robot is complete.

Follow The Link To Have a Beautiful Tutorial On Solarbot:::


SolarBot

How to Build a Simple Robot - Beetle Robot

The following will show you how to build a simple robot, called "The Beetle Robot", created by Jerome Demers. It’s great for beginners and easy to do. This is the Beetle Robot v. 3 you are going to build:

Before starting, I suggest you to read the complete tutorials. This will greatly lower the chances of you making a mistake.

Tools Needed:
soldering iron ( here’s a helpful tutorial on soldering )
electronic solder
diagonal cutter
Mini glue gunComponents for the robot
2x - small 1.5 Volts motors
2x - small paperclips
2x - big paperclips
2x - batteries AAA or AA
1x - battery holder AAA or AA
1x - 2 cm of heat shrink
1x - wooden pearl (for the caster)
1x - meter of electric wire
2x - Sub-mini lever SPDT switches

For The Complete Tutorial Follow The Link:

Beetle Robot