Astro Boy Live Hack....Back in Action!
Sorry had to move the time back a bit, supper came late********
Astro Boy Live Hack (Part 5)
The eighties Astro Boy cartoon was likely the majority of the inspiration that got me into robotics. The whole concept of a child-like robot super hero really intrigued me. The story also had a very emotional back story that had me hooked. While I don't plan on replacing my own children with robots I do think it'd be fun to create my own version of Astro
The AtomicPi SBC will be the brain of Astro, which is quite fitting since Astro is also known as Atom Boy (and Mighty Atom). The AtomicPi runs windows 10 so many of the features of ARC/EZ-builder can be used to create a fully featured Astro Boy with audio input/output, camera, and AI.
In the last 4 Astro live hacks I've designed the robot's frame in TinkerCAD: feet, shins, upper legs, hip section, and chest. Since the chest had to grow to allow room for the AtomicPi the rest of the body parts will have to scale up as well. This week I'll be scaling up the 3D design in TinkerCAD and 3D printing the changes.
Join the live chat and add your comments, ideas, and suggestions!
Thanks for keeping the torch burning! I love your work. Astro Boy was cutting edge.
After this very cool hack on an iconic toy is there anything you can do on Jonny Quest? That one eyed spider really creeped me out when I was a kid.
That Jonny Quest Robot spy is definitely pretty creepy still. Sorry Dave, I don't have much of a personal attachment to that robot but maybe someone else in our community could pick it up as their pet project
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@Jeremie OH NO not a 6 Foot Astro Boy. or is that Astro Man? Dave, Jer does not want to make a one eyed spider robot, but I know you can do it. after all it only has one eye, easier to animate, but 8 Legs You will have to get advice from Will.
@Nallycat Naw, Astro is only going to be 18-20 inches tall.
@Jeremie I was just fooling. But I think you should lean towards 25 inches, more room to fit things in. larger feet for more stability. just more of a Robot, not as much as a toy. How tall was the animated Astro Boy supposed to be. make it that tall.
@Nallycat Whoops, didn't catch that sorry, lol. The animated version of Astro was always the size of a 8-10 year old boy, probably 4 foot something, that's a bit too tall for me. I would also have a hard time getting the parts to fit on the 3D printers. I'd like to keep him as small as I can because the weight starts getting too heavy for the ez-robot HDD servos if I go too big.
@Jeremie Thanks for your answer, most members of synthiam don't answer my posts. do you have some foam left from the 6 foot DJ, that can be sculpted with a electric knife and made into a Astro Boy shape, if you use larger servos. a 25 to 30 inch astro boy would not need gearing maybe the legs. it would look so cool. you could thin fiberglass the foam parts. and then use solvent to melt the foam making the parts hollow. No rubber skin. just thinking.
@Nallycat Not a bad idea! Foam would likely be a great answer to the weight and shape problems. I would likely head that direction but one of my goals, I don't think I mentioned it anywhere yet, is that I would like Astro to be able to be shareable (open sourced) in order that other people could build him too if they so desired.