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Arduino Based Humanoid Bob (Walking and talking)

Welcome to another project in which we will build a small Robot which can walk and dance. The project aims in teaching you how to make small hobby robots using arduino and how to program your Servo motors for such applications. At the end of the project you will be able to make this walking and dancing robot that takes command from an Android Mobile Phone to perform some pre-defined actions. You can also use the program (given at the end of the tutorial) to easily manipulate the actions of your very own robot by controlling the position of the servo motors using the Serial monitor. Having a 3d printer will make this project more interesting and look cool. But, if you do not have one you can use any of the online services or just use some cardboard to build the same.

Materials Required:

The following are the materials required for building this robot:

  1. Arduino nano

  2. Servo SG90 – 4Nos

  3. Male berg sticks

  4. HC-05/HC-06 Bluetooth module

  5.  3D printer

As you can see this 3D printed robot requires very minimal electronics parts to build to keep the cost of the project as low as possible. This project is only for conceptual and fun purpose and does not have any real time application so far.

3D printing is an amazing tool that can contribute a lot when building prototype projects or experimenting with new mechanical designs. If you have not yet discovered the benefits of a 3D printer or how it works you can read The beginners Guide to 3D printing .

In this project the body of the Robot shown above is completely 3D printed. You can download the STL files from here. Load these files on your 3D printing software like Cura and directly print them. I have used a very basic printer of mine to print all the parts. The printer is FABX v1 from 3ding which comes at an affordable price with a print volume of 10 cubic cm. The cheap price comes with a trade off with low print resolution and no SD card or print resuming function. I am using software called Cura to print the STL files. The settings that I used to print the materials are given below you can use the same or change them based on your printer.

Once you print all the parts clean the supports (if any) and then make sure the holes on the leg and belly part are big enough to fit a screw. If not, use a needle to make the hole lightly bigger. Your 3D printed parts will look like something below.

Hardware and Schematics:

The Hardware for this Mobile Phone Controlled Biped Arduino Robot is really simple. The complete schematics is shown in the below image

I have used a Perf board to make the above connections. Make sure that your circuit will also fit inside the head of the robot. Once your Perf board is ready it should look something like below.

 

Assembling the robot:

Once the Hardware and the 3D printed parts are ready we can assemble the robot. Before fixing the motors make sure you place the motors in the below angles so that the program works flawlessly.

These angles can be set by using the program given at the end of the tutorial. Simply upload the program to your Arduino after making the above connections and type in the following in the serial monitor (Note: Baud rate is 57600).

1, 100, 110

2,90,100

4,80,90

5,70,80

 

Your Serial monitor should look something like this after placing all your motors in position.

Once the motors are set in the corresponding angles mount them as shown in above figure.

 

download the code for arduino from here:

Arduino Code for BlueBobBot 

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Arduino code for Bot functions

Processing based Android Application:

The Android application to control the Robot was build using the Processing Android mode. If you want to make some changes to the Application you can download the complete Processing program from here.

If you simply want to use the application you can download it from here as an APK file and directly install it on your mobile phone.

 

Note: Your Bluetooth module should be named HC-06 else the application will not be able to connect to your Bluetooth Module.

 

Once the application is installed, you can pair the Bluetooth module with your Phone and then launch the application. It should look something like this below.

If you want to make your app more attractive or connect to any other device other than Hc-06. You can use the processing code and make some changes to it and then upload the code directly to your phone.

 

Working of Bluetooth Controlled Biped Robot:

Once your Hardware, Android Application and Arduino Sketch is ready it is time to have some fun with our robot. You can control the Robot from Bluetooth Application by using the buttons in the application or directly from Serial monitor by using as of the following commands as shown in the image below.

Each command will make the robot perform some peculiar tasks and you can also add on more actions based on your creativity.

The Robot can also be powered by a 12V adapter or can also be powered by using a 9V battery. This battery can be easily positioned below the Perf board and can also be covered with the Head of the Robot.

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