Carl el Robo Flamingo

The dandiest ball balancing robot around

Carl el Robo Flamingo

Carl the Parasitic Hoverboard Driving Robot

Before the year wraps up, I decided to give a final shot at getting at least one of my robot children mobile. truly mobile. In a meaningful way. I’ve spent the majority of this year working on developing NoodleFeet’s new body, so it felt fair to show Carl a little attention and love. As a recap- “Carl” is one of my characters, a ball-balancing robot made from the body of a plastic lawn ornament. I set out to actually build him in-real-life four years ago, but the endeavor was just hard enough that it required I rely on Mark to do the majority of the coding. In the end, it was also too difficult for even Mark, the wizard of programming, to muscle through. ::sad sigh:: Someone in a conversation I had recently blurted out the concept of “exploiting” technology that has already solved the annoying part of the problem…

Carl el Robo Flamingo

Assembling Carl the Flamingo

Sticking out from my toaster’s head like a crude antenna, is a classic lawn ornament, the flamingo I’ve come to call Carl. Unlike most of the other residents in the lab, he is not an electronic or robotic thing. It has been my intention since I brought him home last September, to liberate Carl from his static form to join the ranks with his mechanical compadres: Carl’s fate is to become a ball-balancing robot… one with motors and wheels… that can balance… on a ball. If you’ve ever seen one, ball balancing robots are impressive as hell and fascinating to watch… because you almost can’t believe that they could work as well as they do! I mean, heck… I can’t even balance on the floor sometimes. The first thing I learned upon researching these beasts, is that in order to build one of my own… I was going to need to locate some “omni” wheels to…