Building Small Robots: Making One Cubic Inch Micro-Sumo Robots and Smaller

Step 4 Breaking The Rules

To make really tiny robots, you may have to break many of the rules mentioned above. To make Mr. Cube I broke the following rules:

1- I used a single power supply instead of one for the motors and one for the microcontroller.

2- I mounted the Picaxe microcontroller very close to a motor.

3- I used batteries that are rated for low current draw and ran them at much higher currents than they were designed for. This severely limits the life of the batteries.

4- I crammed all the wires together in a hodgepodge which can create crosstalk and electrical noise problems. I was simply lucky that it did not.

5- I hardwired the circuit onto the robot without breadboarding it first. This can make debugging the circuit very difficult.

You can download the Picaxe programming code for Mr. Cube at: http://www.inklesspress.com/mr-cube.txt

If you are interested in seeing some of the other robots I have built, you can go to: http://www.inklesspress.com/robots.htm

Pic 9 shows Mr. Cube and Mr. Cube two, R-18, a 1/3 cubic inch robot that I have started to build. Details on step 5.