Evolution of a crazy old man's dream!

Hey all!

Since I'm still waiting on the adaptor for my old hard drive to come in the mail, I figured I'd post ALL the pics I have on Brutus that I have on the evolution on his build, plus a few new ones of his new head that I'm slowly figuring out the programming for. It's a bonnet for the raspberry pi that uses a fork of python that's a real grind to learn. I printed the head myself from an instructables page that's totally servo controlled.

Anyway, This has always been a dream of mine since I was a little kid to build a robot. I literally started at 6 years old with extended family members bringing me old broken small appliances like can openers, blenders, mixers, etc. I'd strip out gears and motors, and with the help of an elderly retired man next door I'd diagnose and repair electric motors.

When the viking landers hit mars, I ate it up. I wrote to NASA asking for anything I could have as far as info about the viking program for my science fair project, and I literally got 2 boxes that my dad had to carry into the house one at a time because it was nothing but printouts and pictures! From concepts, to assembly to photos of the assembled lander, the launch, and pictures that were taken by the landers on mars. Every bit of scientific data, with a small typed guide on what each experiment was, and how to interpret it, obviously written for a grade school class. It cost me my entire allowance that I'd saved up, which was 11 dollars. I'd paid for reproduction and shipping.

 

I've been obsessed with robots ever since then, and actually helped a local high school industrial class build a full size model of the original sojourner. I'll probably build robots for the rest of my life.