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I shrinked the rover

A project log for Earth Explorer in a small parcel

Send a camera equipped robot in a small parcel to mission targets around planet earth

norbert-heinzNorbert Heinz 10/16/2017 at 20:110 Comments

Hackaday price 2017 comes to an end, so its time for a summary.

When I first started building a prototype for a world tour robot, the result was a 34x48x23cm "monster" bot named "R5" with a mass of 3300g. During the months of this year's Hackaday price, my personal challenge was to lower weight and dimensions of this rover. The first approach was building a robot from scratch as I did with R5, but I quickly found that cheap RC model cars are a great option to get a robot up and running quickly. The latest model named "R7" is 440g including 4AA NiMH batteries and an USB charger. With saving money and mostly time in creating a bot I can now think of sending multiple ambassadors to all continents (if people are interested).

...and if mankind gets interested in this relay race around the globe, a larger RC car with offroad capabilities similar to that of "R5" is on it's way to Germany and will be converted next. At least one cheap rover is prepared to conquer Earth in 2018 (I'll take the costs). Whether more or larger ones will follow, depends on the amount of money I can acquire for this project...

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