ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

The second of 4 models designed by the community for Robot Remix #6 is called LIZARD by Anton Vanhoucke.  We asked him to tell us a bit more about how this idea came to be, his design process and challenges he faced building the LIZARD. Because of the green parts in the Forest Machine I looked for green animals. There weren't many. Mostly crocodiles, dinosaurs and lizards. I figured I'd make the LEGO model curve while walking like a real lizard. I was lucky to find that the forest machine includes two turn tables! These would make for nice body joints. To be sure it would work I did a rough model in Studio and sketched over it on my iPad.  When I got the sets and started building I discovered that my Studio model didn't work. The legs needed a better mechanism and the torso twisted the wrong way. That was a bit of a set-back. I also hoped at first that it would walk with only it's legs and the tail for balance, but I had to put wheels under th...

The Cat3rpillar by Anika Vuurzoon and Nard Strijbosch The Caterpillar is a unique combination of the LEGO Technic Forest Machine (42080) and LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 31313 set.  Design Idea: Anika and Nard have a background in building LEGO animals. Therefore, when given the opportunity come up with their own remix design, their first thought was to construct an animal. The Technic Forest Machine set comes with pneumatic elements and this gave them the idea to create an animal that would crawl. The green panels in the Technic set were a perfect fit for this project. The idea of a caterpillar was born! They started with an initial design sketch. The most challenge part of the construction was making the caterpillar crawl as fast as possible. To do this, they had to gear up the pneumatic pump to make it pump fast enough to ensure that there was sufficient air pressure. Although the final design has all the functions in the original sketch, Anika and Nard did have t...