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Unit 10: Electricity Page 18
detectors, tilt and motion sensors, One of the biggest hurdles to
and pressure sensors, you can overcome when building junkyard
develop a homemade robot worthy robots is friction. Since the motors
of the science fair’s winner’s circle. have high speed and low torque,
they can be difficult to use without
In addition to interacting with their a gearbox (which is both hard to
environment, robots need to be find and out of the scope of our
able to move somehow. Robots work in this unit).
can move by spinning wheels,
turning propellers, moving pistons, One of the ways we’re going to
grinding gears, or by eccentric (off- reduce friction is by submerging
center) drive. the robot in water. Since water has
little friction, the robot will move
The robots outlined here cover about quite
three different movement types: a easily in the wet
swimming robot (waterbot), a environment.
dancing robot (jigglebot), and a Just be sure to
steerable robot (racerbot). While keep the
the instructions for these robots batteries out of
focus mainly on the chassis (body the water.
or frame) and locomotion
(movement), you will want to add
lights, buzzers, and any sensors
from the Burglar Alarms section to
make the robot your very own.
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