project: beetley

Another robot from my past... from 2002 yet! Beetley is one of those things you can build in a few hours with some wire, a couple motors, a potentiometer, 2 switches, a battery holder, 2 LEDs and a little bit of patience. Try making one yourself and post some photos for christ's sake. It's not that hard, you're a geek reading a robotics blog, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Ok so Beetley is a classic autonomous beetle bot based on the Beetle robot v.3 tutorial of Jérôme Demers. It's an extremely simple little bot that you can cobble together in one evening with your kids, and use to drive your dog or cat insane. Nothing too spectacular, no chips, caps or transistors, just a lot of soldering. Beetley runs on one of the most basic sensor systems that uses 2 SPDT switches (Radio Shack 275-016) extended with paper clips that act as whiskers. When he hits an obstacle with either switch, the polarity is switched on the opposing motor making him back up and turn simultaneously.

Interesting to see him scoot around the room, especially if you add a small trimpot and some LED's. My version is a few centimeters smaller, running on 2 AAA batteries instead of AA's to power the twin 1.5 Volt Mabuchi motors (RS 275-016). I mounted the pot in the back, and added a small wheel bashed from a cassette recorder. It weighs in at 83 grams (2.9oz). Dimensions are 8.5 (12.3 with whiskers) X 9 X 3.2cm. I've made two of these guys but this is the only one that survived.