My daughter Z and I have been playing with robot-making recently. We harvest motors from disused toys – infant toys usually have great eccentric-weight motors – and have been buying motors as well.
I went on parenting podcast Jumping Monkeys this week to chat about them. You can hear me describe our evolving process for robot-making on their show. One of the most interesting aspects of these projects to me has been working with my daughter, who is very crafty and "bling"-oriented, and who ends up designing these robots which look like they just crawled out of a landfill in heaven. I help with the design, of course, and make the robots work – Z will be four in August – but all of the best inspirations are hers, and I’ve learned to go along with what sound like bad ideas, because they always turn out great.
Here are videos of our three robots in action:
You can read about how to make these robots here, here, and here on Z Recommends.
