Beetle Bot kit by Solarbotics

 Last week, a Beetle Bot kit was received in the lab kindly sent by the nice folks from Solarbotics to be reviewed. A nicelly packaged bunch of compenents travelled all the way from Canada to robotixlab's doorstep in Thessaloniki Greece and despite the summer's heat, somewhere in between coding for an interactive RGB lighting prototype and debugging a motor driver pcb, the Beetle Bot should be blown some life ...

"Beetlebot is the simplest TRUE robot one can build by using only a screwdriver to put it together and then watch it zoom and smartly bounce off things in it's way"

Those are the exact words that Solarbotics use to describe the robot kit but lets unbox it to see...

Once the package is opened, you find a very detailed, full of pictures, instructions manual that is easy to follow. It even provides troubleshooting advices in case something goes wrong. The actual robot kit is specially designed for kids or beginners in making things, without soldering abilities. In other words every electrical component (motors, on-off switch) is pre-soldered with wire terminals and a special harness is provided to connect everything together. Building the robot is very straight forward using the step by step instructions and a screw driver. Believe it or not a Solarbotics screwdriver is included in the kit and it's all it takes to build your very first robot.

Once you screw together the various high quality parts (laser cut acrylic chassis, motors, microswitches, battery case, wire feelers, wicked decorative stickers) and connect them together your robot is ready to roam around and yes it  zooms and smartly bounces off things in it's way !!!

Beetle bot uses a pair of antenae feelers to feel any obstacles.

 start:

If nothing is touching the feelers the bot is running  forwards. As soon as something crashes to the left or the right feeler  the motors take action reversing accordingly until the obstacle is avoided.

goto start

All in all Beetle Bot by Solarbotics is a great robot kit for beginners, using high quality parts and clever design that takes the hard work of soldering away. It's principle of operation is pretty simple to understand, gain some confidence and continue with a more elaborate project. We all had lots of fun in the lab watching beetle bot zipping around and I surelly had even more fun building it!

For more details about the Beetle Bot kit or other great robots by Solarbotics visit Solabotics webiste.