Low Budget Droid

Several years ago I was interested in creating a very low budget astromech droid, reminiscent of some of the droids from Star Wars .  The genesis for the idea was brought about when considering some STEM challenges for my oldest son's Cub Scout pack.  My sons decided that they wanted to create a droid similar to one from the Clone Wars Cartoon that they named Q5.  My boys also decided to name themselves the Special Robot Builders (they were 7 and 4 at the time).  We decided that we were going to make the body from plastic containers and scrap wood we had around the house.  We used a plastic pretzel container for the body and a whipped cream container for the head.  We then made 2 main legs and a center leg from the wood.  Bought an inexpensive caster for the center leg and added 2 continuous servos to the main legs.  For added effect we mounted the whipped cream container on a servo.  Inside of the pretzel container we added an Arduino, LEDs, a piezoelectric speaker and a few other bits.  Once all of the wires were connected and the Arduino was properly programmed this little droid was controlled by a smart phone.   It was a fun little project and if memory serves, it cost around $40 in 2016.  

Here is a video of it in action:

Also, I have an Instructable for the entire process if anyone is interested: https://www.instructables.com/id/Q5-a-Star-Wars-Themed-Astromech-Driod/