Free antbot bodies, no gimmicks! Well, almost: read on.

We now support the popular MSP430 LaunchPad board from Texas Instruments, and have completed a fully 3D printed design for the plastic Antbot chassis. While it does not quite have the outdoor capabilities of the official metal-body Antbot chassis by Inertia Labs, it is something that can be generated on any 3D printer! As you can see, this includes the tracks. We will release the entire design on Thingiverse for free…. if this post gets enough comments.

To sweeten the deal, the prototypes chasses have a few cosmetic flaws, and we’d rather give them away than sell them — you just pay for shipping.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

After a long weekend of testing in which the printer ran nonstop, we’re ready to starts selling 3D printer broom attachments. This will allow any 3d printer to batch-print overnight, without changing the printer’s firmware or doing mechanical rework other than zip-tieing the extra parts in place.

The Series 3 is a budget version of the Series 2, with only two motors; it is slightly faster but has less torque. The PCB is the same, so you can easily add your own servos! You can still use it to tow a LEGO cart to your grocery store and bring back a can of pringles, of course!

Unlike the standard Antbot, this floats. However, the motors are wet and its center of gravity when the phone is loaded is high, so don’t do it at home!

If you want a floating antbot, here’s one. The standard antbot PCB can be used for this purpose.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The Solar Rover is being sent to SQUAD, makers of the excellent Kerbal Space Program videogame.

The Antbot 2.4 features the same reliability and oomph, plus a new 3D printed body that allows it to tow Lego and K’nex trailers. There is now a choice of microcontrollers to go with it (Arduino, Propeller, MSP430 and Picaxe).

We have developed a way to operate entry-level 3D printers without intervention.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The PhoneSats have launched!

We have contributed to the PhoneSat project by writing the custom kernel for the phone, and designing a serial router to tie the phonesat’s systems together. This eventually became the PropBridge.

More information can be found at www.phonesat.org

To celebrate, we have released a space-themed board game that can be downloaded for free; you will need dice and optionally a 3D printer for the token models,  although we’ve been playing it with Antbot parts…

Most of everything we sell is open source and open schematic – Jodi has built an Android rover based on the antbot design, with minimal help from us.

And we are okay with it!

As a reminder, most of our technology is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license.

More details can be found here:  http://letsmakerobots.com/node/36137

Q: I understand that you’ve started working for Robots Everywhere. When did you join the company?

A: I’ve been with the company since November of 2012.

Q: Would you please tell me a little about yourself?

A: Oh, I’m horrible at talking about myself. Always a bit shy, always try to stay out of the way and get everything done in the background so others find it suddenly already finished.

Q: Not unlike the shoemaker’s elves! If we could at least discuss your background from a business standpoint, that would be a start.

A: Most of my work experience is in customer service – basically sitting in a chair at a computer all day with a headset on, answering calls and fixing problems. I’m glad to get a chance to actually be working with my hands and making things with some purpose.

Q: So, you’re a problem solver – is that a skill set you’ve found helpful in a more hands-on environment?

A: Certainly so, especially picking up a lot of it as I go along. How to make something do something is a lot more interesting of a puzzle than how to correct something within a standardized computer system. How to connect two things together, how to get this wire from here to there without causing any problems, how to get disparate components to do a more complicated task – definitely fun sometimes, even when it might get frustrating. It’s a very nice change.

Q: It sounds like you enjoy a challenge; what has been the biggest challenge for you, transitioning from the service industry?

A: Mostly it has been moving to an environment where I have to be genuinely self-directed, where the steps to get something done aren’t laid out in front of me most of the time.

Q: Autonomous, like the robots! Since joining the company, which projects have you worked on?

A: I’ve done general assembly work for the most part, mainly on Antbot and Navcom, as well as researched software for tasks like video conferencing and 3D modeling/printing. I’ve been exploring micro-controller capabilities for future projects a lot recently.

Q: Of all the tasks you’ve performed to date within the company, have you developed any favorites? A particular type of work you are better at or like more than others?

A: I definitely enjoy the assembly work the most. Having something come out at the other end that does something immediately is pretty awesome. I would say it’s what I’m best at as well, but it can be hard to measure performance with other types of tasks.

Q: Do you have any professional goals?

A: To improve everything I touch in some way if I can and to learn from it if I cannot.

Q: If only we all could! Now, you’d mentioned a few projects you’d been involved with in the past – what are you currently working on? I’m sorry to press the issue, but “future projects” caught my interest!

A: Much of it is still just looking at general capabilities of products from people like TI instead of solid projects of our own yet. I’m still learning how to do more complicated things myself, in a lot of ways, so very little feels outside of the “toy” area of things with that: remote controlled boats, boxes that make music or have to be hooked to lots of other boxes to make music together, things like that.

Q: You’re learning all the fundamentals with these smaller projects, building up to the development of larger ones! The goal of these interviews is to check back with the company’s employees from time to time and report on its various projects for the curious reader. Is there anything you think the general public should know? Any observations or words of wisdom you’d like to share?

A: There really aren’t enough robots. Robots could be doing so much more already, and hopefully will be in the future. Working here makes me think about how many jobs people are doing that will go away and wonder how the world will have to change to accommodate that.

Q: Something to think about… thank you for your time, and I’ll look forward to speaking with you again in the near future.

A: Thank you, I’m glad to talk with you!

Sure that Matteo would have some ideas about how to put the jobless to work in his new regime upon global conquest, I followed up with him:

Q: What are your plans for the jobless workers replaced by robots in your new world order, assuming your global conquests plans come to fruition.

A: If we have an automated economy, that means nobody needs to work. It worked on The Jetsons – people worked like three hours a day? Work should be enjoyed. Any work that nobody can have fun doing should be automated. Any time I feel like gardening, for example, I’ll turn the aeroponics rig off and do it myself!

Again, this is Ian and that’s my progress report for Robots Everywhere!