Wednesday, September 30

Cardboard Robot Deathmatch

Fighting robots are even more awesome than regular robots. But it’s hard for us to imagine tossing all that money (not to mention blood, sweat and tears) into a bot and then watching it get shredded. The folks at Columbia Gadget Works, a Columbia, MO hackerspace had the solution: make the robots out of cardboard.

The coolest thing about building your robots out of cardboard and hot glue is that it’s cheap, but if they’re going to be a modest scale, they can still be fairly strong, quick to repair, and you’re probably going to be able to scrounge all the parts out after a brutal defeat. In short, it’s a great idea for a hackerspace event.

If you’re interested in replicating any of this yourself, have a look at their official rules and be sure to watch this full build-log of the winning robot. (It’s fun to watch him repeatedly burning his fingers on the hot glue starting around 5:44 in the video).

Hackerspace member [gamerdonkey] also pointed out that these guys are no strangers to the magic corrugated material — they built an awesome dragon boat out of the stuff and paddled it to first place in a charity boat race.

What are you waiting for? Get out your matte knife and make something cool out of that pizza box!


Filed under: Hackerspaces, robots hacks

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