DIY PIXAR: M-O (Microbe Obliterator) Cleaner Bot

Hey Instructabrarians, it's July 27th and you know what that means! Probably not because I just made it up, it's PIXAR Animation Fan Week! Folks, if you've ever seen my DIY PIXAR booth at the San Mateo Maker Faire, you'll know that I am a mega huge PIXAR fan.  I absolutely love their movies and grew up watching their very first film Toy Story and have
since had an avid obsession with each one of their movies. And this week, in honor for their newest exhibit at the Oakland Museum of Art, PIXAR 25 Years of Animation, I'm very pleased to present some of my favorite PIXAR builds I've made!

First one this week is M-O the Microbe Obliterator.  You might remember him from PIXAR's Oscar Winning film WALL-E, he was tiny cleaning robot whose sole purpose was to keep protect the Axiom from FOREIGN CONTAMINANTs. Now, we've seen a lot of fantastic cleaning robots on this website, and I thought I could perhaps weigh in with some of my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Directive) brethren to share my love for
cleaning. WALL-E is one of my favorite movies and from that film, and M-O is probably my favorite PIXAR character of all time.  That's why he's the first in my PIXAR related instructables this week!

Step 1 Modus-Operandi

When I reverse engineer anything into real life, my underlying goal is always to respect the construction of the object. As I began to plan out M-O, I knew I wanted my robot to feature nearly everything that his on screen character counterpart displayed. The features I wanted my robot to exhibit were these:

1.  Rotating scrub brush (his main cleaning functionality as shown in WALL-E)
2. Vehicular Rollerball (ability to move around)
3. Extendable Arms
4. Disinfectant Carrying Backpack
5. Compactability, no external battery packs or wires, everything should be able to fit within his tiny frame

With these in mind, I drew this rough sketch of how I thought everything might be able work in real life.  Now he's still a work in progress, so if anyone has any ideas/ suggestions on how I might be able to improve my build, please share!  I'm always looking for better ways to improve my builds.

Comments

[thedevilyoudont]

WOW pretty sweet man! can a make a suggestion though? if you were to use a second set of drive motors and wire them up similar to how a tank drives (one side forward and one side back to turn) you could potentially set it up to move similar to the balancing robots you see here (and this would take some doing and probably a full redesign (thinking I might do it myself too) but you could also use the liquid filled backpack as a kind of ballast to help him balance. alternately if you were to attach the brushes a little differently so they were hinged he could potentially be steered by raising/lowering the arms in opposing directions...
just future Ideas though no criticism meant and certainly nothing negative you did an amazing job on this little guy. Im definitely going to try to make one

[dandroid20xx]

This is brillant

[mph121]

PLEASE POST VIDEO!

[Matrix-technician]

This is absolutely amazing!. One of my favorite character robots on this site! I must have one of these! Also a sugesstion. If and when i make mine i thought about using a higher grade micro motor. such as you find in rc helicopters. How well did these cheap motors perform? If the seemed to do alright let me know. I would be much happier using a cheap motor i fit works just fine.

[SHIFT!]

Although I'm pretty sure they shouldn't cost more than $5 each or so.

[SHIFT!]

Hmmm, not sure. I used mine from a 1.5 micro dc motor that came from mini rc cars not helicopters so I wouldn't know. I just bought two cars, both of which cost $15 each at my local hobby shop and they both contained a total of 2 motors separate.

[Matrix-technician]

It would be really cool to add some kind of simple pump system to actually dispence the bacpack solution directly onto the brush or have it do like a fan spray onto the surface being cleaned.

[SHIFT!]

This has been addressed before and yes have thought of doing this but there wouldn't be enough space for all of the electronics.

[Matrix-technician]

Could you substitute a cd player spinner motor in place of these fan motors?

[SHIFT!]

I suppose you might, not sure how big a CD spinner motor is though. I just used a fan blade because it's small enough and operates under very low voltage.

[ms10]

i liked it
where did you got all these things from

[ksiedlecki]

can u send me all the materials used, and maybe where to find the materials like the motors, etc.
me email: [e-mail]
also, can u post a vid of it moving.
thanks

[SHIFT!]

Video will be posted eventually.  All the parts need are listed on the parts page.

[spylock]

The drawing is cool,they actually look pretty nice frammed.

[sunshiine]

I will share this! Thanks for posting.

[Codynater]

Yo, How much did this cost you all together? I was thinkin about making one of these, but afterall, I dunno how old you are, but im only 13, so to me this is kinda hard. Also, have you ever considered to sell some of these on Ebay!? Cuz I would definatly buy one!!! Plz get back bro,
Codynater

[SHIFT!]

Hi Codynater, I can't remember the exact cost of him, but IIRC all of the parts were under $15. However, it's not exactly the cost rather than finding all the parts the actually worked.  If you've got all the right parts (ie mini computer fan, small cm dc motors) then you could probably do this project- it's not extremely difficult.

I have no plans on selling any of my builds.  Sorry.

[Codynater]

Ok, I have enough money to cover the cost of this, but im pretty sure I have everything I would need to make him. Also, He is one of my most favorite pixar characters, so this is a really cool project, and hopefully its not extremely difficult, but I know you have had experience, so I dunno, But if I need any help ill be sure to ask you!
Thanks,
Codynater

[SHIFT!]

Fantastic! Good luck with your build and please send me a picture of your finished product!

[Cobalt59]

He is SO CUTE! I love pixar animation!

[SHIFT!]

Thanks Cobalt59! I love M-O, he's my all time fave PIXAR character!

[Cobalt59]

My favourite would have to be Luxo jr. But I don't know if he counts.

[SHIFT!]

Nope LUXO Jr. totally counts- he is in every single PIXAR film after all.

[Cobalt59]

That's true!

[aminn]

great nice. dud..

[SHIFT!]

Thanks aminn!

[Miscellaneous]

Does this robot only move in one direction or does it have the ability (when it hits a wall or such) to turn and continue on its way?

[SHIFT!]

It's unidirectional for the time being. But like I said, this is a work in progress and for a larger scale model I'm planning on adding a drive track to him so he can hopefully follow a line.

[wareneutron]

such a nice job to make a robot

[lupus mortii]

use a tube to attach the backpack to the brush so it can actually clean things

[SHIFT!]

Thanks for your comment lupus. Yes I did think about doing something like that originally, but I ultimately decided not to do so sense along with trying to make the robot function, I wanted it to be a real life replica of the one on screen.

However, one of the brushes I actually made for my M-O robot functions as a Sponge. I added a thin siphon like tube from the backpack and into the hollow brush, so that water can fill up periodically. Then, as it rolls across the ground, it gently expels the cleaning water over the messy area.

[Applejuice11]

This is SOOOO cute! i need to make this! M-O is my favorite character ever!

[SHIFT!]

Thanks Applejuice11! I love M-O too, he's easily my favorite PIXAR character of all time! He's a very interesting character, that he's so cute but takes his job extremely seriously, which is what I really pushed for in the design of my bot.

[tech industries]

just a couple suggestions: 1.what if you added some type of double gyroscope inside so the whole thing could balance on just the mousewheel, at least for a short period of time 2.you could attach a servo to the mouse-ball container so it could act as some sort of steering 3. using a microcontroller (such as an arduino nano) programmed to clean at regular intervals, like a mini-roomba 4. shape the the cleaning head so it resembles the blades of an impeller; that way, you could have some pump action which could actually be used to draw some disinfectant from the backpack (presumably to be used when cleaning) I just wanted to run these by you and anyone else who comments on this instructable, as I was thinking of making one of these myself

[SHIFT!]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions Tech Industries! My main thing with building this robot was 1) Make it as Movie Accurate as possible and 2) Make it actually function. I was originally thinking about using a gyroscopic balancer on him, or at least making him bottom heavy so he can move upright, but the problem I found while doing so was that the electronics to move his rollerball around wouldn't be small enough to fit nicely inside his torso, and I would have to create some kind of extruding base (which I didn't want to do). I know it doesn't quite look like it from the pictures, but I actually had a few problems getting all of the basic electronics to fit in him already, so I had to make a few sacrifices to make it fit. I also wasn't really interested in adding any sort of addendum to the Water Backpack, as that wasn't really in the movie. I did, however, make several interchangeable Sponge and Mop brushes for wet and dry cleaning.

I will probably build a larger scale version of M-O during the summer, which should have a balancing gyroscope.

[knexman123]

dose it actully move arond and if it dose you should post a vid of it

[SHIFT!]

Yep, it can move around fully, but right now only goes in a straight line. I'll post a video of it soon.

[jeffreyshi]

i would really appreciate that. It sounds like a great idea!!!

[knexman123]

thats coool i would love to see the a vidio i would deffentyl make it if it had steering

[knexman123]

you could have a little jocky wheel at the back with a servo and a sender and reciver hooked up to all the motors in so u could control it with a remote