My Autonomous HomeMade Wall-E Robot

Everyone loved Wall-E, and it's no surprise that I also did...

I was walking through the Super Store buying groceries one night, when I took my usual detour through the toys section and spotted Wall-E. This is a toy made by Disney that was truely the most annoying and dissapointing item since the stupid iRobot Dinasourp.

This "toy" merely make wierd smashing noises and waves it's arms and head around. The box advertises "interactivity"... Other then the smashing noises, it does aboslutely nothing. It doesn't even move!!!! Only it's arms move, and they are animated together by a gear assembly and a single motor. Boo Hoo! Oh well, it was $22.95!

Enough of that!!

I took it apon myself to build a REAL Wall-E. That's fun and independent, etc.. I wanted to use the shell to make an autonomous version... And guess what? After some brainstorming, i decided that i can do it. Maybe...

I modified the circuit that came with the toy and stole it's eeprom. So now i can trigger the Wall-E samples "WALL-E and EVAH" etc.. :)

- 1 EZ-B EZ-Robot Kit: http://www.ez-robot.com
- 2 GWS Nano servos for arms
- 1 GWS Pico servo for head tilting
- 2 modified parallex servos for movement treads
- 1 GWS regular servo for head left right
- 18F4685 microcontroller @ 20 mhz for brain
- 1 Sharp IR Distance sensor to see with
- My custom 40 pin PIC board ;)

So far he does lots of things. He's autonomous, which means he drives around and explores the world. He maps out his world in a 2D array stored in memory. His job isn't purely to drive around, as you can see in some of these videos, he has many animations and emotions...

Completion!

So he pretty much has joined my collection of robot pets. The idea is to write the program so he doesn't get stuck or require interaction. Instead, he just does his own thing, looking for evah!

Comments

[pranav vempati]

How did u make the wall-e talk???? Does this come with the kit???

[pranav vempati]

How did u make the wall-e talk???? Does this come with the kit???

[kokawise]

DJ ,
I wonder if i could make wall e with arduino

[vortexus]

My friend, if you are still working on this project I highly recommend that if you wish to take the sensory devise to the next level that you incorporate a Micrsoft Kinect. It is cheap, the coding is readily available on the internet and the abilities of the sensor our astounding!

[D5quar3]

You call kinect cheap??????? I have one and I payed 150 for it and it is soo much more fun on the xbox than cut up and used for a robot.

[vortexus]

Dear laddy, if you take a look at the conventional alternative hardware, you will see that in fact Kinect is extremely cheap in comparison.

[D5quar3]

Yes, it is cheap in that way, but if I have a kinect, and an xbox Id rather play it than use it for a robot.

[KWHCoaster]

Parts is parts.

Oh, I'd love to cut up something with a M$ logo. ;-)

[jangoknight7]

did you get k-9 from parkers tutorials or somewhere else?

[djsures]

I made it from scratch and used no other references. Check out more info about it at http://www.DJ-Sures.com/robots

[rcamp004]

This is a great piece of work, but it doesn't seem like an instructable. We should be able to use your ible to hack our own Wall-E's. Also, I may have overlooked it, but I didn't see the code you created posted up anywhere. Still, great work, and love the ingenuity.

[djsures]

thanx!

firstly, as you'll see in all microcontroller instructables, it's very difficult and rare to post code. aligning servos and values returned by sensor locations are going to be different. circuit design will be different, etc. so on that note, if you are inspired by one of my projects, then maybe it's a great reason for you to learn some microcontroller code :)

you can read, see pictures and watch videos of my projects off my website @ http://www.dj-sures.com

[Mellor]

Can I have a copy of your 2D mapping code please! please! please!!! I want to hack my roomba so that it actually maps and vacuums around my chairs and things. THAT WOULD BE SO COOL! I'm not that experienced enough of a programmer to write that myself.

[djsures]

sorry, that'd be practically impossible to port to a roomba if you're not experienced programmer. and i don't release my code freely into the wild as i spend a lot of time on my projects :)

[Jake_Rider]

Hey, can you give me the instructions (all) so that I can build one?

[badassriffer]

add some gears to the servos. the movements are a bit jerky and fast. freaking amazing though.

[seansippo]

this alone proves to me that with enough time and money we could build an almost exact replica of wall-e that actually can crush garbage into a cube and such.

[singam]

i just need that outer cover of the toy .what to do for that?just to prepare  my project.i need the address to buy that toy onlyand other equipments separately.may i get it.please reply me quickly

[Nykus79]

now you need build EVE and watch it flirt around with eve

[TheDr]

Hey really cool I would like to build one of these can I buy a copy of you C code and circuit diagram?

[lukeymoo]

May I ask, This is the Biggest Question i ever had, How Do you Apply your code or extract your code to the robot? i wish to do this in a private business and sell these things for some cash because right now i really need it :)

[hg341]

give it a gun^{hee hee}

[thepelton]

Cute! I loved that movie, but I flunked electronics class.

[Michelle_voix]

cool... i love wall_e

[Junkyardmaster14]

nice mod you done there!!! very great!!!!

[GMer56]

So Awesome! They should sell these in stores! (how much did it cost to build?)

[Dudeyowuzup]

You're amazing. Will you marry me?

[t19ac]

can I buy one from u, its very cool and my girlfriend would love it.

[VogelYogel]

Have you considered adding a sort of "interaction" function for Wall-E and K-9? Something inside both that broadcasts on the same frequency, so when they come within a certain distance of each other they'll interact? Maybe K-9 can sniff Wall-E's bottom? That'd be funny as! Then Wall-E can zoom away, waving arms and looking generally startled! Great instructable, by the way. I know how disappointing those things are. You made it awesome!

[camb00]

Are the blue lights led's? or infared?/Whatever?

[djsures]

the blue lights are led's . the infrared distance detection is on the neck. u can't see the light from them .

[kennyvs]

Wow it look so cool! May i know what model of Wall-E did you bought?

[djsures]

you bet . it's called the interactive wall-e . they are $19 at walmart

[kennyvs]

Thnx man, becuz im thinking of the body part of Wall-E like you did for my school project by using the 8051 microcontroller. Thank again.

[mycroftxxx]

PLEEEEEEEEASE add an instructable for not only the finished bot, but for using some of the tools that went into him. I think I hurt my voice going "SQUEEEE" over and over again. You, sir, are a genius

[CameronSS]

Awwwww.... Did you realize that you can embed videos into a Sideshow? It would make it a bit easier to view the videos.

[djsures]

i think i just did.. let's see if it works. i uploaded it in the image section

[CameronSS]

Whoops, I forgot that slideshows don't have the Video button. However, if you copy and paste the following text:

[[Video(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDodQwu1slM, {width:425, height:350})]]

it will embed the first video at that point in the text. You can replace the "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDodQwu1slM" with the URL of whichever video you want to embed.

[djsures]

got it thanx!

[Bongmaster]

looks kool :)