Artist Bristlebot

These are pictures from a workshop I organised at school for the occasion of my daughter’s birthday party. The children (aged 9 to 12) each built a bristlebot out of a dishwasher brush after sawing off the handle. Some testing beforehand revealed that the shown attachment of the motor provides a strong propulsion and allows for some control of the curvature of the trajectory by shifting the motor a little to the left or right.

The motor and a battery holder with a pre-soldered switch were attached with double side tape. Soldering the leads to the motor was done with small groups of children, under close supervision. In the meanwhile the others were asked to make a drawing of the kind of world these bristlebots might inhabit. The motor gets a tie-wrap for extra fixation and a 2-pole connecting block makes an easy-mount off-balance weight.

We put out some large pieces of paper on plastic sheets, with wooden strips as a “fence”. Then, with the bristles dipped in a saucer with gouache, we let the bots lose on the paper to create their own paintings: