After I had success with my challenge to build a 1″x1″x1″ NanoBot, I wanted to try my luck at something a little larger. MicroBot measures approx 2″x2″x1.5″ and uses the same Atmel microcontroller and battery (see N anoBot details). The body was custom made from a larger piece of 4mm white PVC. MicroBot gets its’ senses from 3 front mounted ProxDots (IR units) and a bottom mounted IR unit (for line following). This gives MicroBot the ability to detect left, center and right objects and to react accordingly. The drive motors are self contained units pulled from some old LS120 laptop disk drives. The motors are used to eject the disk so they have a great amount of torque for their size.

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MicroBot uses a variety of pico-sized components including:

  • Atmel Mega 8 Microcontroller
  • 2 LS120 disk drive loader motors.
  • A 3.5V IPOD Shuffle battery unit w/built-in charger.
  • 3 ProxDots

Some of the key electronic components are:

  • AtMega8P main CPU (IC AVR MCU 8K 16MHZ COM 32-TQFP – ATMEGA8-16AC)
  • Photointerrupter Line sensor (x2) 424-1096-5-ND
  • All caps, resistors, LED’s are surface mount technology (SMT)

For more information on the MegaBitty and NanoBots, check out the Yahoo groups here: MegaBitty There is a video (right >>) that shows it in action.

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