Building the Otto Starter Bot

 

• As there is an avid interest in building toys, opensource bots come in very handy.
• One such opensource bot is the Otto Bot. They have designed multiple versions of bots that can be integrated by kids and provided detailed information on their website Otto Bot Website
• Designed by a toy maker basically uses off the shelf hobbyist components to build and program bots.
• One can learn to assemble the hardware, write code using a GUI like scratch or even use the Arduino IDE and also is extensible.
• The plastics are also open sourced and one can download and print them if there is a 3D printer available. There is availability of online 3d printed parts. After assembling the first Otto, a couple of other Otto kits were also integrated by interested parties (kids/adults)
• The default software collection comes with a Scratch frontend called Blockly. One can download it and examples for various hardware and emotions etc are available. This makes it a good tool for STEM.
• The basic movements that are possible are as shown below