STEAM 4 Legged Robot

This is an easy, DIY, and homemade STEAM project. You can do it anywhere. This can teach you how to make robots and most importantly, teaches you patience to create what you want.

Caution!

This project consists of sticky and somewhat hot and sharp materials. Must have adult supervision when creating this project. Handle at your own risk!

You'll need the following items to do this simple, movable, and fun STEAM project.

2 cardboard boxes

1 ruler

1 pair of scissors

1 pack of skewers

1 switch with pins

1 DC electric motor

Some electric wires

9-volt battery connector

1 hot glue gun with hot glue

1 knife

A pack of rubber bands

To make our frame, you need to cut your 1st cardboard box. We will walk you through the dimensions. With your knife, cut the sides off of the cardboard box.

Now we get the dimensions! Cut the middle piece vertically in the dimensions shown in the picture above. You might need help from an adult to cut it to the exact same width.

Now cut on the dimension shown in the picture above.

Now get the piece that is in red.

This will be your base of the robot.

Now we will cut the sides to finish off the frame of the robot. We will first cut off the left and right sides in this step and then the front and back of the robot.

Get your knife and 1 side of your cardboard and cut the flap of the cardboard.

So we cut the base of our robot. Our robot is about 100 millimeters, or 10.0 centimeters long. So we need to make our robot 10 cm long, from right to left or left to right.

Now we will finish cutting the sides of our robot. but, we want to make the sides as perfect as we can. Let's cut the side in half so we can get our sides of the robot.

I know. I am sorry for cutting a step, but cut about 7 millimeters from the right side to make the piece of cardboard 100 millimeters or 10.0 centimeters.

Now, use your hot glue gun to hot-glue ONE SIDE piece on the LEFT SIDE.

Now we attach our motors! But first off, let's understand our circuit. You can learn more through this PDF document. You can skip this step because it's optional.

PDF:

file:///C:/Users/YAN/Downloads/EDL%20Robot%20Circuit.pdf

WE ARE SORRY IF YOUR SWITCH CIRCUIT DOESN'T WORK IF YOU DID THE PDF

First, get one of the pieces that we had when we made the base.

These steps are pretty simple. You need to get your DC motor. Your DC motor should look like the one I have shown above without the gear.

Now use the gear and make a circle-like shape. Make another circle. This will be our pulley to drive the robot.

Get 1 piece of unused cardboard, perhaps the flap of one. Get a ruler and make a square 1 cm x 1 cm. Make 2 1 cm x 1 cm squares and hot-glue them together.

My jumper wires are from an old arduino electronic kit. If you do want to know more about my jumper wires, it is basically a colored wire. One tip of the wire is like a socket to connect other wires or the pins on our switch. The other tip of the wire is the pin. We could use this "pin" tip to connect to the "socket". You can buy the wires here:

(Female) https://www.amazon.com/Premium-Breadboard-Jumper-1...

(Male) https://www.bananarobotics.com/shop/Male-to-Male-...

To connect the motor, grab the pin tip and put it in one of two large holes. Do this with another wire.

Cut 2 1x1 cm squares (dimensions listed above) from the cardboard flap you just got, and hot glue the 2 squares.

Now hot glue your motor to the stand.

Now take your 9-volt battery with snap-on clip or your 1.5 volt battery box. Connect 1 wire from one end of your 1.5 volt battery box or put the wire on one end of the snap-on clip in the configuration above.

Now attach the other terminal of your battery box to the left pin of a switch with a wire. Attach the center pin to the other part of the motor.

Grab a piece of cardboard and make yourself a strip of one.

Hot-Glue one end to a skewer.

Now pierce a hole on one end of the mainframe of the robot. Do the same for another leg, but put it on the other end.

Now make some circles for your robot. Make sure that they are perfect circles.

Put 1 pulley wheel on 1 leg axle of the robot. Do the same for the other one.

Now put 2 circles on the shaft of the motor and connect a rubber band that runs from the motor to one leg. The do the same for the other one.

Attach 1 rubber band from the motor to one leg and do the same for the other one.

Cut a flap of the leftover cardboard you have in the dimensions above.

Now drill a hole so that your wires can fit through.

Now glue your battery box.

Now you will finish the body. Cut 1 piece of cardboard in the dimensions that are on steps:

#4

#21

You should end up with something that looks like mine from the picture above.

Now you should be about 6/8 finished with the robot with the motor and stuff. We have made 2 cranks so far, or legs. We need to make 2 more to make our robot actually stand.

Do the same for the other side.

Now grab some of your skewers and cut it into a toothpick-long skewer, or grab a few toothpicks.

Puncture them into the legs.

Now you are going to make the legs. Puncture a piece of cardboard into each toothpick. Make sure that they are long and wide.

GREAT! YOU ARE ALMOST FINISHED! NOW TO CREATE THE TOP TO FINISH IT ALL UP!

Now you go back to Steps 1,2,3,4, and you make the top. Get your knife and cut a marking to fold the cardboard. We need people to see their errors, right?

Glue the short end.

Congrats! You've just made a robot!

Behind the scenes:

I have spent literally 2 months on this because I am a pretty busy guy who gets distracted every now and then.

This is my best work so far.

The contest begun on June 17, and when I knew that they were giving out $100 amazon gift cards, I knew I had to join. So I came up with "Why don't I teach people how to create a working robot and use TinkerCAD to make the pictures?" and the race was on. I saw that other people had submitted their entries, and I worked faster. The faster I went, the more I became stressed and defeated, let down by thinking to myself "I can't finish." I prayed to God (I am a Christian) every now and then and look where it got me! I am finished with my project! So %80 of the credit goes to him. Thank you guys for motivating me and encouraging me to do this. Thank you judges!