So, you want to build a LEGO robot, eh?
One mobile platform which will carry the Handyboard is the "Dawn Treader," shown at the right. Except for the second motor, all the parts can be found in the LEGO Dacta 9609 kit, as listed and described below. (Though a few extra people and frills have been added to the one pictured.)
If you don't want to design your own, then the Dawn Treader will be the basis of the robot that you build for the Marlboro College Lego Robotics course.
You probably should look at
the Art of Lego Design before
you start; several of the ideas described
there are incorporated into the Dawn Treader.
Here are the pieces I used for the Dawn Treader itself.
These are certainly not the only reasonable
combinations; in many cases I used what I
had on hand rather than what I might have liked.
Your mileage my vary.
The guts of the Dawn Treader are the two gear assemblies at
the bottom of the vehicle.
The image at the right shows one assembled and one half-assembled.
(Note that you can see bigger version of most of these pictures
by clicking on them.)
Begin by putting the gears and spacers centered on the 8 4-spot
axles as shown at the left.
Then rivet together the sides into
a 3-beam 16-spot blue outside wall
and a 2-beam 16-spot red/blue inside wall.
Next connect the outside "wheels",
and rivet the whole collection together
with 6- and 4-spot blue vertical beams). Each 4-spot axle
has 3 things on it; one has a 24-spot gear, a spacer, and a 14-spot
gear, the other three a 24-spot gear, an 8-spot gear, and a spacer
in various orders.
If you're still having a hard time getting all the details from the pictures, maybe these hints will help.
When you're done
each of the finished gear boxes should look like the image at the left.
(As with all these pictures, click on it to see it enlarged.)
The next step is to attack the two gear boxes together and
add the motors. Use the 6 6-spot red beams vertically,
three at each end, to rivet the inside (blue/red) walls
of the gear boxes together. Attach the rivets at the
third hole in from each end of the gear box walls.
The two motors attach directly above the fastest moving
24-tooth gears on each side, side by side with their
axles facing the left and right sides of the Treader.
Attach the electrical wire blocks to the sides, run
the wires up next the central vertical red beams,
and attach the other 2x2 block to the front of
the Treader.
Once the motors are in and the two gears boxes are joined,
add grey flats to the top and bottom:
- The 2x6 and 2x8 flats go on the bottom to increase
the rigidity a bit.
- The 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8 flats fit on top of the outside
walls and along the center of the two motors.
- The two 6x10 flats then cover over the motors, on either
side of the central 1x8, and extending out to the
two side walls.
Finally, the last step is to build an enclosure for
the Handyboard, which rides on top.
Two of the 8-spot red beams
attach in the normal to the two base's outer walls,
while the remaining 8 beams
are laid on their sides and riveted together into
the rectangle shown at the right. Lengthwise, two long beams
are offset by two holes and riveted together, while side-to-side
the last two long beams are riveted in their second hole in, with
a short one centered to even things up. The holes in the sides of this rectangle
then push down into the 8-spot beams attached to the base, and voila!
The Dawn Treader.
All that remains is to place the Handyboard on the top, wire it up to the front electrical blocks, program it (that's another story), attach a few sensors here and there as you please (so's that), and let 'er rip!
If you want to pile something on top of the Dawn Treader,
it's pretty straightforward to build a "hat" to go on top.
(These pieces are not included in the parts list.) I used
two 8x16 green plates and a bunch of red beams to make this
one, which may be inserted (upside-down) into the Handyboard's
lego enclosure.
