Introduction
Greetings to all past, present, and future roboticists and tinkerers. I know there are about a zillion web pages out there pointing to everything imaginable and sometimes unimaginable, but I thought I'd try adding something a little different to the hopper. This article mostly points to sites with "home-built" robot information that shows that projects can be started and finished (at least to the point of having a machine that actually moves or does something). The list below in not by any means exhaustive (although collecting and checking it all was exhausting!), but a modest collection of cool places where you can see what people are doing and in many cases, how they did it. Building your own robot is a very challenging and rewarding experience, but it takes perseverence and patience to see it through to completion. I hope you enjoy the voyages through these web pages. The sites and the robots give you a little flavor of the people who made them and maybe some inspiration to "keep on keeping on".
The 50+ builders listed below are arranged alphabetically by last name. Some will be familiar and some not, but all share a kinship of robotics as a hobby or buisiness. I hope to provide links to interesting success stories that have been posted to the Web. I want to help people find out about one-of-a-kind, home-built robots from people who have built them. There are walkers, wheeled machines, arms, simulators, etc. These sites show real robots and projects built by real people using real hardware and software. My hope is that you can use this article as a convenient jumping point to practical technical information about some successful personal robotics projects.
I have tried to capture the gist of some of the websites by listing the robot names if available and/or some brief information about the website. No pictures are included here since the websites will no doubt be updated and changed from time to time.
Explanation
The "Projects" link point as directly as practical to the actual robot information. Most of these sites have both pictures and text. The "Homepage" link points to the builder's home webpages where there is likely to be lots of other good, but not necessarily related information. Homepages are referenced if no specific section for their robot projects was available. Use this list to pop in on these websites from time to time and see what's happening. Also, consider that many of these sites have "interesting" or "useful" links to still other places. One could spend a lifetime following all the possible paths!
Let me know what you think of this type of article. If you have other interesting ideas, feel free to
pass them along to me.
Enjoy the journey!!
