This Is How You Make a Military Robot at Home With a 3D Printer

Engineering Juice is passionate about, you guessed it, engineering and has a YouTube channel dedicated to it, with lessons and his own accomplishments in the field. And recently, he thought about putting his skills to work to build a military robot, optimized for desert environments.

The engineer used CAAD (computer-aided architectural design), a 3D printer and the necessary components are all available for purchase on Amazon.

Engineering Juice used a steel roller chain connected by fasteners and 3D printed links, to make the robot move on a continuous track. The drive motor is powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, four to be more specific, and he built the battery dock to hold them.

The robot has an HD night vision camera mounted on the front and it can stream video to a VR (virtual reality) headset. And to make the robot hard to spot, the guy added desert camouflage fabric to disguise it.

As far as programming the robot goes, he used a Raspberry Pi 4 microcontroller, and the code used to control the robot was written in the Python programming language. The device can be controlled via your smartphone.

The engineer follows you through the entire building process in his 10-minute video, from design to testing and the end result.

Engineering Juice is just one of the robot “nuts” out there. Arno van der Vegt also boasts on his homemade mini car factory made of LEGO. The factory is fully functional and includes five robots, each with its well-defined role.

And then there’s also StackSmashing, a reverse engineering genius who figured out how to make the Game Boy Tetris a multi-player game you can play with anyone in the world. You still use the Game Boy but you can also get online via a USB Link Cable Adapter.