One of the reasons why I got involved with electronics and technology was robots. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by these cool systems that we all knew from films and television, that move, have their own intelligence and that you just had to like.

Sometime at the end of the last millennium I started to build my own robots. From today’s perspective, the results are pretty measly, because today the children in kindergarten are already programming robots with more functions than my turtle bots have ever achieved. 😕 But there are 30 years of rapid technological development in between and besides, kindergarten children don’t build the robots and the software completely themselves ‼️

The exciting thing about designing and building robots is the element of surprise when you let the robot run for the first time. Thanks to the combination of mechanics, electronics and software, surprises are guaranteed. Most of the time, the robot behaves completely differently than originally thought. The cause for this is usually small things, such as sensor contacts that switch through when driving off due to the acceleration, falling off wheels, etc… A success is when it moves, something flashes, makes noise and no smoke rises!

I’ve done some designs for Turtlebots, but the bots never really got finished. You can find two of these old examples this design process on the german version of this page.

When I build something new you can find it here, too!