Week 9: Robot Battles!

This idea was pulled from the interwebs about 3 years ago. It was the second  year I was married and my husband and I actually did this one night with dinner guests and it was easy and super fun. I got the idea originally from Red Ted Art.

I modified it for grandparent camp this year a bit, by making it a robot battle. I will say the kids under 3 weren't very interested, but buddy the kids from 3 until 9 were completely into it. The best thing is that the robots were made out of all craft materials and recycled things that Grandmother and Grandpap had on hand. The motors are 1.5-3V hobby motors that cost between 1-2 dollars.

Materials:

Hot glue gun and hot glue

1.5-3v craft motor

1 AA battery

electrical tape or soldering iron

anything you can think of to make a cool robot

We probably should have used the double sided foam they used on Red Ted Art. The vibrations tended to wiggle loose the hot glue pretty quickly, but it worked okay without it.

1. Hot glue the battery to the motor and attach the wires, one to each end of the motor. Make sure the motor spins.

2. Attach  something to unbalance the spinning end of the motor. Each of the kids chose something different. Some used plastic beads, some bits of wire. The point is to unbalance the motor enough so that it vibrates.

3. As soon as you verify that it wiggles, let the creativity begin! The only important part is to make sure the motors end can spin. We attached at least one end of the wire with electrical tape so it could be un-attached to stop the vibrations. Building our robots.

The kids really loved seeing how each of the robots moved, and building something that moved on it's own. Modifications went on and on, and we didn't even get through the battles completely, but I don't think anyone cared.

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The battle circle. Whoever pushed the other robot entirely out of the circle first won! This was great because it's entirely random, so the littler kids had just as much of a chance of winning as the older kids.

The kids chose so many different materials to build their robots. This one is made out of a toilet paper tube with yarn and pipe cleaners attached.

Pipe cleaners and toothpicks!

The bead attached to the front of this motor is what causes it to vibrate.

This project was fun at our dinner party and fun for the kids. Two AA batteries wired together will allow the motors to spin faster...a 9v battery will burn out the motor pretty quickly, though.

This project was a blast!