Inventors Kit 2: Wobbly Wrobot

In this activity we will make a wobbly robot!

You will need to find a small cardboard box or plastic tray, such as a strawberry or mushroom punnet. A lightweight paper or plastic cup will also work! This will be the body of our robot.

We want the motor circuit with a switch we built in our last activity, like this:

We want to change the motor connector so that there is a small weight that makes our robot wobble! We make this by sticky taping the nut to the motor connector and fitting the motor connector back onto the motor.

Use our switch motor circuit from before. Try pressing the switch. What happens now? It should be wobbling away!

We now want to attach this to our small carbord box or punnet. Use some more elastic bands to do this. I needed to use 4 extra bands to hold it in place.

Press the switch and see what happens to the box. Does it move? It should start shaking and moving a bit crazily. You can adjust where the nut is on the motor connector to change how much the box wobbles.

Here is the wobbly robot I made:

Warning: Messy activity! Make sure you do this in a place where you can make a mess!

You can attach a few felt tip pens to the edges of the box. Put the pens down onto a large piece of paper. When the motor spins and the box moves then the pens will make marks and draw patterns.

Here are some links on wobbly robots and ideas:

• Science Buddies Wobbly Robot
• Wobble Bot on Instructables
• Homemade Wobblebot

Search for wobble bot, wobbly robot, bristle bot and see what others have done!