The joy of building robots comes from being able to imbue them with as much or as little personality and functionality as you wish during the design and build process. While creative flair and originality is always a good thing, there’s a lot of basic needs many robots have in common with each other, so where possible it’s good to avoid reinventing the wheel so more time can be spent on more advanced features. Roboshield aims to help make the basics easy so you can let your robot freak flag fly!

At its core, it’s an Arduino shield that packs in a host of hardware to get your robot up and running. As far as motion is concerned, a PCA9685 module is used to allow the control of 8 servos, plus there’s a TB6621FNG dual motor speed controller that offers both speed control and forward/reverse. That’s enough to get your electronic buddy scooting about the floor and waving its arms in the air.

The party piece, however, is the Vstamp text-to-speech module. This device produces a beautiful cliche electronic voice, which your robot is legally required to use to recite Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. Overall, it’s a tidy project that can take the hassle out of getting your robot design up and running, leaving you to focus on the fun bits like death rays and tractor beams. We can’t wait to see it powering the next wave of sassy DIY robots.

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