August's Human Powered Robot

I play with different educational manipulatives for a living. (Visit www.weirdrichard.com). My children are spoiled with access to all sorts of toys! 

I told my son (age 5) about the Instuctables/Autodesk Kinetic Sculpture Contest. "You just have to build something that moves!" With some excitement, he ran to his LEGO station and created. A short time later, he strutted over and proudly presented his robot! He demonstrated that it moves by sliding it along the floor, pushing over a variety of minifigs.

Not bad for a 5 year old.

I have to admit that I enjoyed playing with this model, especially in tackling those pesky rock monsters.

This instructable will describe how to create the human-powered "August's Robot".

Note: The CAD images were generated in LDraw/MLCAD. The avi file was captured from LDView. The nice rendered images were created with L3PAO and POV-RAY. Additional
editing performed in GIMP.

LDraw software available at www.ldraw.org
POV-RAY available at www.povray.org
GIMP available at www.gimp.org/downloads/

You will need to gather your parts. These components are available from BrickLink (www.bricklink.com - my preference), and often come up at Craig's List or ebay. I also haunt yard sales! (This robot was created entirely out of parts purchased at a yard sale!) Elements can always be purchased from LEGO or one of their retailers.

The List:

2 Brick 2 x 3s
1 Brick 2 x 4 with Pins
1 Brick 2 x 6
1 Brick 1 x 2
1 Plate 1 x 4
2 Plate 2 x 4s
1 Plate 2 x 10
1 Plate 4 x 4
1 Plate 6 x 8
2 Tires (Medium)
2 Wheel (Freestyle Type)

Put the tires on the wheels, and push the wheels onto the 2x4 brick with pins.

Stack (from bottom up) the 6x8 plate, 2x4 plate, 4x4 plate, and the 1x2 brick. This assembly acts as a ski, so I am calling it the "Front Sliding Ski".

Line up a 2x10 plate and a 2x4 plate. Add a 1x4 plate, 2x3 brick, a 2x6 brick, and another 2x3 brick on the plates.

Connect Rear and Front assemblies with the Body assembly.

Enjoy your finished robot! Use it to push over rock monsters!