How to Build a Robot With Servos

Building a robot with servos is not the difficult process many may consider it to be at first thought. The word "robot" comes with a lot of advanced and high-minded ideas attached, but in reality, a basic robot can be built utilizing just servos, a battery, a receiver and a controller in a short time and with little to no money. With the servos acting as motors for the robot, powering it along, and a solid wheel base acting as a mode of transportation, you can have a highly mobile and controllable servos-driven robot in no time.

Things You'll Need

• Wheel base
• Battery
• Four- or six-way receiver/controller combo
• 2 Velcro pieces
• Professional-strength glue
• 2 servos
• Dual-lock tape

Instructions

1. Scout around your house for any old toys, specifically radio-controlled (RC) cars. These cars already contain servos perfect for your robot, along with many other important pieces of the robot puzzle. Specifically, try to salvage a receiver and controller combination that is either four-way or higher. The "way" refers to the degrees of movement allowed for your robot. A four-way receiver/controller combo, for instance, allows for up-down and left-right robot movement.

2. Find a bare wheel base or take an RC car and strip off the unnecessary plastic pieces, leaving only the wheel base and setting aside other important and usable parts, such as the battery.

3. Glue the two Velcro pieces to your wheel base. Apply one Velcro piece to the bottom center of the wheel base, and the other to the top center.

4. Place the battery--either nickel cadmium or lead acid, although the former is more efficient--on the bottom Velcro piece. Then attach your receiver to the top Velcro piece.

5. Attach servos to your wheel base. Use dual-lock tape and place the servos at opposite ends of the wheel base from one another, and along the perimeter and near the wheels. Make sure the servos are secure.

6. Wire all the components together through the receiver. These components will be wired via the channels on the end of the receiver, one component per channel. Take the wire lead from the battery and connect it to the receiver channel that is listed as "Battery" or "Batt." Then connect the two servos in separate channels from one another, but in directly adjacent channels that are away from where you connected the battery.

7. Turn on your controller and give your servos-driven robot a test run, making sure it responds. Feel free to add any decorative functions to your robot as you please. Now you have a fully functioning servos-driven robot.

Resources

• RC Receivers