Hello. This is WeRbots, with the robot videos, you know another robot Freak...

I built this website mainly to have a place where I and my friends, amateur and professional robot builders could show off our stuff.

Though this isn`t exactly a step-by-step project you can build, it is fun because, for me at least, it is a way to record my robo-nutiness for all posterity. At least as long as there is a You Tube!

This is a collection of the commercial robots I bought. Some I bought to learn, like the Avoider, others I bought to Mod, like RoboQuad, whatever the reason, these are some of the bots I bought trying to make my way in the world of DIY robots.

Enjoy the Videos!

My wife got me one of these for Christmas. It took a while to unwrap it (and a large screwdriver). But when I finished, I thought Id hate it, but it was just too cool for words.

There are a lot of RoboQuad videos out there, so I grabbed one I thought best represented the RoboQuad off YouTube. Its another Mr Roboto, the guy who invented Robo Quad... In fact he invented the whole field of BEAM robotics.

BTW... RoboQuad was one of my 4 year old grandsons favs when he came to visit recently. Id have sent him home with it, but I have another project in mind for RoboQuad.

It was purchased to gut it for motors, etc... Whoda thought it would be such a fun demo-bot to keep around?

Out of the box, I was a bit dissapointed with the scribbler, but that wasnt the robots fault. When I started programming it, it was E-Z to fix so it would operate in close quarters.

But, out of the box I could see that to operate in close quarters, the bots vision was too powerful. So it would see something and try to back up and run. In close quarters, it would always see something and always back up. [Backing up, the stall detector doesnt work. Thus neutralizing the conceptually helpful feature of the bot.]

As a quick fix, I covered the IR detector with a patch so I could control sensitivity, and it worked fine. I chose it cause it was one of the bots specified for Robot Studio, and because for the price, it had a load of built-in features.

It was easy to program and came with the software and solid documentation to allow you to Mod its built-in software. For beginners, there was a visual programming interface that allowed a drag N drop way to get the bot to do what you wanted. For more advanced Modders, there was a Basic Programming language interface.

To more heavily mod this baby gets tricky. It is round and gives you some chance to make it square easily. Basic isnt the best language for advanced modding, but it was a parallax, so there is even a C-Compiler (open source). For eighty bucks, this is a great introduction computer. And the Scribbling capabilities mean it would be fun for budding computer artists.

I bought this bot specifically for the "out of box" experience. I wanted to know what the market would tolerate for $80. My research showed this bot had a optimal (for a hobby bot) design as a platform for sensor research. And I was well-pleased with the out of the box experience.

This was my first experience with autonomous robots (on the cheap.) And I was not dissappointed. Out of the box, it was a wall follower with IR built in. Simple, worked as promised.

But it was intentionally limited in features. It was an Avoider it used infrared to discover and "avoid" obstacles in its path.

Then the modding began. I built an H-Bridge out of a handful of parts from my own junk box. I didnt plan much, just wanted to experiment.

Of course, then I needed to control it with a Microprocessor. Thus initiating my first picAxe experience.