The Design Process

So you've considered pursuing the Robotics Merit Badge, eh? Or you're just wanting to build a robot for fun? Well either way this first step into creating your robot is extremely important. This is the design process. Now if you're a first time robot builder (it's okay, so am I) then you'll have to do some research first. The Robotics Merit Badge requirements state that the robot must accomplish a certain task, use sensors, and require programming, and have 2 degrees of motion, so these requirements will greatly narrow your field of research. An example of a degree of motion would be: forwards, backwards, up, down, left, right, and if you're creating a wanka-vator then you could use slantways, backways, and any possible way you can think of. However, I'm not daring enough to build that one, so instead i'll be sticking with the basic forward, backward, left, and right.

In order to find the robot I wanted to create, I browsed the web looking up robot tutorials, robot competition videos, and various pictures of r2d2 and wall-e (no joke, it gets the creative mind up and running). I found two websites to be extremely helpful in my research and design process. The first of which is a DIY website called instructables, and the second was Radio Shack's website for their Great Create. Both of these websites influenced me in different ways, as well as help guide me through selecting the parts I need.

The first website, Instructables, is extremely helpful and I strongly recommend using it. I found a good tutorial on how to make a clusterbot out of various parts, however it is a bit expensive. You can find the tutorial here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Clusterbot/

The second website, The Great Create, was also extremely helpful too, and it was there that I found a link to the tutorial I mainly based my project off of. You can find it here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/RC-Car-to-Robot/

I will post my various design pictures in the next post.
Thankyou.