I bought the Turbot from Solarbotics as I wanted to start looking at bots with alternative methods of locomotion to wheels.  My particular interest in robotics is walking or legged robots and so I wanted to start with a simple non-wheel based robot that was about my current skill level (I.e. intermediate beginner).  I liked the turbot because of the unusual way he moved about and his ability to scramble over low obstacles placed in his path.  I didn’t get around to building him until early November however, largely to do with the lack of confidence I suffered after building the line follower and finding that he didn’t work as expected.

I built the turbot over two weekends, each session about 2.5 hours.  I did all the electronics on one afternoon and then found that I needed a drill, something that I did not have with me at the time (it being at my flat and me being at Ian’s).  The electronics were not particularly difficult, but there was considerable more parts than either of my previous robots and, as I found, the more parts, the greater the chance that you’re going to do something wrong.  I had a couple of close shaves with diodes almost soldered in the wrong way around, but both halves of the bot were successfully built in a couple of hours.

It then took another 2-3 hours to put the two halves of the body together with the battery pack and “legs”.  Holes needed to be drilled into the motors to attach it to the main body of the bot and the whole process was rather fiddly (and required 2 people to complete).  Once finished however, the turbot worked first time and we spent a happy half hour creating a little obstacle course in my living room for him to negotiate.

The turbot is a light-seeking robot with two motors, but instead of wheels it has two “legs” of differing lengths.  The shorter leg is bent in an L shape inside the longer leg which is also bent into an L shape.  These legs then rotate around the body, each leg “deciding”, based on the direction it wants to go in (toward the light) and what obstacles are in its way, whether to rotate clockwise or anticlockwise.  This unusual movement allows the bot to turn and climb in it’s own particular way.  It has light sensors on both sides of it’s body, so regardless of which side is up or down, it can still determine which direction to move in.

The Turbot Tumbler from Emily Toop on Vimeo.

I’ve demoed this bot to a few people and have been surprised by how little interest it’s generated.  I have to say it’s one of my favorite bots and I love it’s distinctiveness.  Maybe it’s problem is that in comparison to the sumobots (coming soon) it is rather simple and less fun, but I remain rather fond of him.