Lil’bot, the little robot that could
Lil’bot is a robotics project by Chris Hakim who aims to develop a low-cost, open-source, Arduino-compatible balancing robot. His aim is to make a robot that is not only fun to play with but also introduces children to robot programming using a playful way.
The Lil'Bot project started when he promised his eight-year-old son to build a small balancing robot that he could program himself. Soon after, this project turned out to be much more than originally envisioned.
Programming
Chris uses a block-based programming language called "Lil-Blocks" which is based on Fred Lin’s BlocklyDuino. The language BlocklyDuino is a version of Neil Fraser's programming code Blockly for Arduino.
In this programming language the Blockly code used is visualized using block images, much like Lego-blocks. These blocks are then translated into Arduino C to instruct the robots movements and behaviour. This Lil’Blocks programming makes programming look like assembling Lego bricks, and still teaches children the basic programming concepts.
As with all learning it still requires some patient adult guidence to bring out all the possibilities the Lil'Bot has to offer.
Arduino Compatible
Lil’Bot is completely Arduino compatible, although Lil'Bot is not related to Arduino and is not giving support. The documentation includes schematics, PCB-layout database, parts lists and ordering information, assembly instructions, etc.
EmoShield
The Lil’bot robot is able to express some artificial emotions through an optional emoticon-like LED display called “EmoShield”.
The following emaotions are available: fear, amusement, anger, blissfulness, being cool, crying, disappointment, embarrassment, happiness, impatientness, being naughty, neutral, nonplussed, outraged, pride, resigned, sad, sarcastic, shocked, smiling, and very sad. Give your robot the gift of emotional expression.
The emoShield allows your Lil'BOt to tell you how it feels!
Goals
If this project goes well, Chris plans to develope more shields for th Lil’Bot. Although he is not promising that these things will ever be made, these are the ones he has in mind:
Design
Lil’Bot has especially been designed to make it easy to manufacture. The manufacturing plan is as follows allowing one month as buffer, in case of assembly errors, part shortages, etc.
Challenges
The risk and challenge lies mostly by how well the balancing can be controlled. Li'Bot project is based on using inexpensive toy motors. If they would use other motors lik stepper motors the cost would go up condierably.
As you can see in the video, the robot can move around, spin, stand upright, and balance while wiggling back and forth somewhat. While this is an extremely encouraging sign, it is not yet time to declare victory.
This is one difficult problem, which has kept many an engineer up late at night. I get help from John Sokol (http://videotechnology.blogspot.com), a fellow engineer experienced with balancing robots.
Updates will be posted as progress is made.
Help Chris
To finance this plan, Chris started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter asking for $ 15.000,- of which he already has collected $14.050,-
You can back Chris' Lil'Bot project already with a minimum of 1,- ! Robotics Today believes in this project and already backed his project. What about you ?
As of today the Lil'Bot Project has been fully financed with $ 18.174,-
Congratulations Chris !
