Let's Make Robots!

Robot Video Competition

I have some robots and robot parts looking for a good home. I want to give as many as possible a chance to win but I want entertaining video for everyone. There is a strict time limit so you have to be quick.

Since paper and cardboard robots have featured a lot lately and not everyone can afford to spend a lot on parts this will be a contest to make a robot from paper /cardboard and / or wood. You can use a circuit board but extra points are awarded for using cardboard for your PCB.

I will judge all videos based imagination, cleverness and the ability to make me laugh. This contest will be about your video more than your bot. Make it do cool stunts. Make it dance to music. Make more than one and have them fight it out. Print brightly coloured pannels or even cut out photos from a magazine to decorate your Bot.

If you don't have any money or parts then print, cut and fold paper robots and do an animated video. Add music. LMR is your audience. This is a chance for anyone to score some robot parts reguardless of their abilities.

TAG your robot video with "Robot video competition" and post a link to it on this thread.You can enter as many videos as you want and defer prizes to someone else if you don't want them.Even if you don't want a prize, enter anyway just as an excuse to make a fun video :D

I will choose five winners. The first place winner gets his choice of prizes. The second place winner chooses next from what is left. This continues until all prizes are given away. Click on the photos for a bigger picture.

The prizes are:

Junior
He is not currently working. He only needs 8 resistors replaced and new batteries or you can use him for parts to make a new and better robot. Juniors arm has 5 degrees of freedom.

 

Turbo Trike
It is currently set up for RC control but will be supplied with a breadboard, picaxe 28X1, Maxbotix EZ1 sonar and the guts of a Wii nunchuck controller that apparently has an I2C 3 axis accelerometer. You will need a proper LiPo charger to charge his battery. Since it needs to be lighter I will include some light weight omni wheels to replace the caster wheels at the back.

 

JunkBox1
Included will be 6 large double omni wheels, 4 geared DC motors and a large ball caster compliments of DAGU. A blue backlit 128x64 LCD display, 2 large stepper motors, linear actuator and various prototype boards,battery holders etc.

 

JunkBox2
Included will be 3 small double omni wheels, 3 small single omni wheels, 3 geared DC motors and 2 small ball casters compliments of DAGU. 2x 8x8 bicolour led arrays, push type solenoid, along with various proto boards, battery holders etc.

 

JunkBox3
A Tamiya dual gear box, tank treads and universal plate. 1 DC geared motor from DAGU, 3x dc motors, 1x 8x8 bi-colour LED array. 1 Sharp IR sensor plus protoboards, battery holders etc.

 

 


Well the competition is over and the winners announced :D

 

 

First Place goes to "The Adventures of Fobot the Robot" by Mikv. This video went way past my expectations for imagination and creativity. A lot of effort went into it. The special effects were great and I laughed till it hurt.

Second Place goes to "Mech-Walker (Unplugged)" by Gareth. The robot was the type of thing I expected but I was not expecting clever "Blue Screen" special effects or to wind up as Captain Kirks nemisis. This video also made me laugh a lot.

Third Place goes to "Zezinho meets el Sapatero" by Guibot. I did suggest having two robots fight it out but I was not expecting a musical battle. Nice choice of music, it suited the bots.

Fourth Place goes to "Shamus the Robotic boy" by SHAWNMBOLAND. It never occured to me that anyone might make a robot costume. Points awarded for thinking outside of the box while putting a small child in a box.

Fifth Place goes to "Stuntbot AKA Dreambot" by Ajster. This was a tough descision as there were a few entries I considered for fifth but I felt that Ajster's attempt to show that robots can have dreams and aspirations was imaginative and well presented.

 

Other entries in this competition were:

"Cardboard Walker" which was a very nice robot but no attempt was made at a creative video even when I dropped a hint.

"Starformers" which was very funny and imaginative but it wasn't a video of robots made with paper/cardboard/wood.

A two part entry by Patrickmccabe which, as suggested by Mikv does remind me of the movie "Hancock"

 

The prizes are packed and will be on their way tomorrow.

 

 

 

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
For those that haven't, go to my profile and click on the contact tab at the top.
Hey whats the absolute latest we can submit our vid? What time tomorow? Because im about 12 hours way from home. Grim.

Since the finish date is tomorrow for me but my time zone is +10hrs then to be fair it will be 2am thursday (my time)

Gotta love last minute entries :D

I think I'm still in time  :-)

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/8630

My entry isn`t gonna make it :(

Not having a sense of humour I spent too much time on the robot itself, plus other commitments conspired to keep me busy. Oh well, I will post it anyway when I finally get it done.

Good luck to those in the running!

Well this competition is nearly over and I am still waiting for a few who seemed keen to participate. Some people haven't read the instructions at the top very well and seem to have missed the point. It was not about building a technical marvel out of paper/cardboard/wood so much as doing an entertaining video with paper/cardboard/wood robots as the characters. The reason being to try and make it easy for everyone to enter even if they didn't have much money. At the moment my 5 best entries in alphabetical order are:

Cardboard walker bot
Fobot
Mech walker unplugged
Shamus the robotic boy
Stuntbot AKA dreambot

With an honorable mention of "Starformers" in which no trees were harmed in the making of and thus was not eligable. Please let me know if I have missed anyone.

 

So far ther have been many surprises in this competition.

While scientist have controlled a robot with brain cells from rats and other small creatures, Shawnmboland managed to utilize the entire brain of a small child in his cardboard creation.

Ajster demonstrated that even the most simple robots can have dreams. Do they count electric sheep?

Gareth introduced the latest in "Blue screen" technology using cardboard for that as well.

Mikv impressed me greatly with his pyromaniac skills (or was it pyrotechnic?)

Just when i thought i was getting away with it - the low budget Hollywood "Blue Screen" has been rumbled - they didnt have any A0 size cardboard (which would have hidden the fact that it was cardboard as you pointed out) - i had to use 4xA4 instead - (if you notice in the Lt.Uhuru part there is a thin black line under the bot - only because i couldnt round the corner from wall to floor...)........ so there will be no cutting corners from now on........
Not really an entry, but you can watch what i made here...