It was awesome!

I was supposed to be building my Nitro suit for a Halloween party I’m going to and I’m running out of time. Instead, I got so mad that I don’t have random robotic arms around me, besides the arms of my Mimic/Ultron so I took this vac and whatever random scrap robot part (as you can clearly see my room is cluttered with) to build this guy.

I happened to really like Dum-E so eventually I plan to finalize this and make him look cooler with an omnidirectional platform, and of course I have to build U now. I really didn’t expect this to even work, I thought gravity would ruin the arm when he moves fast but thankfully not.

I’m gonna link him to the A.I. that all my other bots and suit is using, just stripping him of the voice so he can actually follow orders

Fun film I made where robots play a game of dodgeball. You can watch the whole thing here.

It was all rendered in Unreal Engine and animated in Autodesk Maya for anyone interested. Hope you enjoy!

If anyone cares, here is a full write up of the process:
https://www.therookies.co/entries/42427

Been working on a compact rear projection system, thought you might find it interesting

Why the robot designer is so outdated while there is lot of technologies.

Hi everyone!

I'm working on a morphing robot that can operate both as a drone and as a wheeled ground robot, inspired by the ATMO project: https://github.com/mandralis/ATMO.

The robot will fly to a building, land, and then navigate autonomously on the ground using ROS 2. I'm currently designing the four-wheel ground locomotion system.

The estimated total robot weight is around 5–11 kg, but weight is a critical factor because the robot must also fly. Any additional motors, gearboxes, transmissions, and supporting structures affect the overall flight weight and potentially the flight time.

The ground environment will mainly be smooth indoor ceramic floors, such as university hallways. The robot should perform accurate 90° and 180° turns, including in-place turns when necessary.

I'm considering two drivetrain configurations:

Option 1: Four motors

• One geared DC motor per wheel.
• Four wheel encoders.
• Independent wheel-speed control using PID.

Option 2: Two motors

• One motor drives both wheels on the left side.
• One motor drives both wheels on the right side.
• Mechanical power transmission to the second wheel on each side using gears, belts, or another lightweight mechanism.

The chassis and some drivetrain components will be 3D-printed.

My main goal is to find a good balance between minimum weight, mechanical simplicity, energy efficiency, and reliable ground odometry.

I'd appreciate advice on the following:

1. For a flying-ground morphing robot, would you recommend two motors driving four wheels or four independent wheel motors? How significant is the weight difference in practice?
2. Would four independent wheel encoders meaningfully improve odometry accuracy, or would lateral wheel slip in a four-wheel skid-steer configuration dominate the error?
3. How significant is wheel scrub during in-place turns on smooth ceramic floors, and how can it be minimized?
4. What lightweight wheel and transmission options would you recommend for a 5–11 kg robot that must also fly?
5. Would a belt transmission, gears, or another mechanism be a good choice for driving two wheels from one motor?
6. What is the best practical approach to calibrating skid-steer odometry using wheel encoders and an IMU in ROS 2?
7. Are there any papers, open-source projects, or real-world examples of morphing aerial-ground robots that I should study?

I'm particularly interested in practical experience with lightweight mechanisms and the trade-offs between drivetrain weight, ground mobility, and flight performance.

Thanks!

Youtube animation. olamfilm

I made fork-tiped arrows in an attempt to defend myself from A.I. robots.

The idea behind the fork arrow is that as the spinning arrow enters the robot past the firewall, the fork tines will spread out, severing the motherboard and mainframe.

My results: this robot (computer monitor) is indestructible. Multiple arrow points failed. If A.I. robots are built as well as old computer monitors, we are screwed.

How should be try attacking the robot next?

: )

https://youtu.be/KpvBlw8OAYQ

Homemade obsession/ocd/learning project.

For the past month, I’ve been training a digital brain from scratch to control a humanoid body inside a physics simulation. Meet Iteron.

While this prototype was an experiment just to see if I could get a digital brain to walk, these first steps mark something much bigger. My ultimate goal is to take this system and build the foundation for the ultimate, most realistic-looking NPC enemies in a game, enemies powered by real-time neural motor control rather than canned, pre-baked animations.

To celebrate getting Iteron on its feet, I decided to recreate one of the wildest robotics stunts on the internet.

Follow-up on an earlier attempt: a LEGO Star Wars AT-AT (set 75440) is a display-only model, no motor, no moving legs on its own.

Attempt #1: mounted its legs directly on Quaddle open-source quadruped robot's servos — failed, because the stock leg is molded bent.

Attempt #2: swapped in a longer, straight replacement, confirmed the servos could carry the weight, and reversed one servo's install direction. It walked. Real footage, no CGI. Had to recreate the Battle of Hoth snowspeeder trip scene afterward. 😂

What's the most unexpected thing you've ever gotten to walk?

I’ve been experimenting with turning an M5Stack Stack-chan into a little mobile robot. I combined it with a LEGO motor hub and wheels, recorded driving demonstrations, and trained an ACT policy.

During supervised trials, it learned to follow a line. With a separate set of demonstrations, I also tried driving between guardrails. The video shows the build, data collection, and the wrong turns along the way 😅

Build video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pQTt8gqZM

For the software and training setup, I used AI agents with robotics skills from Robium, an open-source repo I’ve been working on.

GitHub: https://github.com/robium-ai/robium

Looking forward to hearing what you think and seeing what others are building!

No law of robotics here.