Making your own Wall-e with NXT

This weekend many people would be able to see the Disney Pixar film Wall-e in Europe and USA. The film about a robot that falls in love is one of the most creative to come out of the Disney-Pixar studio for a while.

To mark the release of the film, the oficial web site has a 'Build your own robot' section where you get to choose the looks / behavour / mobility etc.

And of course, if you got a NXT - you dont need to go to a web site to design a virtual robot. You can of course build your own real Wall-e! Well almost!!

To get you started, here is some inspiration. This version, designed about a year ago was based on a leaked picture of the robot and it won one of the NXTLog building challenges last year. My kids and I had a lot of fun creating it - it can be built with the components from one NXT retail kit and one 2007 TECHNIC Bulldozer kit.

If you want instructions on how to build it, check out the NXTLog instructions here.

Edit: Thanks NXTFanatic - I have updated the NXTLog link.

Edit: If you want even more inspiratoin - check this out: I just came across an incredible version done by Joe Meno (BrickJournal Magazine). It is very faithful to the movie version and absolutleyincredible. OK - it does not have a NXT in it - but it sure captures the spirit of the Wall-e better than anything else I have seen.

Additional pictures and details on Flickr

Edit: Here are some more pictures of Joe's Wall-e from Brickworld last week. Special thanks to Brian Davies for the link.
Brickworld pics of Wall-e

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and...

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

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