Microbot for the Robocup 2008

posted Apr 14th 2009 2:14pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: robots hacks

[tioguerra] helped make these tiny bots for the World Robocup 2008 in china. There’s tons of information on the Mixed Reality forum, but you might be specifically interested in the bot section. There are breakdowns of different aspects, such as charging and IR communication, as well as some great photographs of the unit along with a smaller one. The construction of the robot seems so nicely fit together, someone spent a lot of time getting the design just right. Since we don’t see a new section for 2009 bots, we are guessing that they’ll use this design again.

Comments [14]

tagged: robocup, robot, small, stepper, tiny

14 Responses to Microbot for the Robocup 2008

George Graves says:

April 14, 2009 at 2:45 pm

I’ve been looking for more info about this FOREVER. Thanks hackaday!

Reply Report comment

bluehash says:

April 14, 2009 at 2:46 pm

Pretty impressive work and a neat design. Are they being sponsored by Citizen?

Reply Report comment

Spork says:

April 14, 2009 at 5:13 pm

These things are amazing. I bet it took a ton of work to come up with a design like that. I’m jealous.

Reply Report comment

amk says:

April 14, 2009 at 5:35 pm

very cool. these thing would absolutely rock in a swarm. you could do some pretty cool things with several dozen tiny cube shaped robots.

Reply Report comment

punmaster says:

April 14, 2009 at 10:04 pm

That little thing is awesome, and in a strange way, even kinda cute. :) There’s definitely a lot of swarming possibility there. I cant help but ponder the idea of 500 of these little “creatures” getting together and exhibiting intelligent behavior as a group. Amazing.

Reply Report comment

tapius says:

April 15, 2009 at 8:56 am

I would love to see schematics on building one of these things. So few pictures, i wanna see its GUTS man :(

Reply Report comment

SK says:

April 15, 2009 at 9:17 am

The schematics of the “head” are posted in the forums:
http://odin.pcag.fh-wolfenbuettel.de:8080/mixedreality/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=30.0;attach=19
However we have no board layout, because this was designed off the schematics by Citizen. They are also responsible for the rest of the body, so that no plans for the mechanical parts are available.
Sorry, but currently those robots are only available via Citizen (and quite expensive: ~250 Euros each).

Reply Report comment

therian says:

April 15, 2009 at 3:52 pm

electrical engineers usually terrible with mechanics, so there is a need for platform with all mechanics on it so ee would add control to it and use it, does anyone know such kit ?

Reply Report comment

SK says:

April 16, 2009 at 12:09 am

This is exactly the way it is: You have to buy the complete robot from Citizen and only have to solder the “support components” yourself: Programmer adapter board, recharger and IR-Transceiver. The schematics for these parts are available in the forums.

Reply Report comment

bort says:

April 16, 2009 at 4:15 am

“electrical engineers usually terrible with mechanics”

lolfag

Reply Report comment

bluehash says:

April 16, 2009 at 5:41 am

@sk: Do they have a webshop or something, or is it through an internal contact?

Reply Report comment

SK says:

April 16, 2009 at 5:51 am

At least to my knowledge this is no “official product” of Citizen, so there is no webshop or anything. I am sorry, but I do not know who is the contact person at Citizen for orders (or even if ordering ist possible for non-Robocup uses).

Reply Report comment

bluehash says:

April 16, 2009 at 6:16 am

Thanks anyway.

Reply Report comment

hs says:

April 16, 2009 at 7:48 am

you can register in the forum and ask – we will help you there to get your robots.

Actually we have kind of problem to sell all robots produced by citizen…

Reply Report comment