If you follow me on social media you may have noticed that I have a few robotics projects on the go at the moment! I’ve always loved robots and living in an age where electronic components to build or customise your own robots is so accessible is something I find amazing! Child-Me would have loved to have all of this tech at her disposal! I’ve decided to write about the robots’ progress here and share some of their code as I go along as a way of documenting the projects!
So, let me in introduce you to the robot team . . .
Omnibot
I bought Omnibot, a toy robot from Tomy that came out in the mid-eighties, second-hand from eBay with the intention to customise him over the summer with up-to-date electronics. It took me a little longer than expected, but this has been a really fun project to work on and has given me a good understanding of programming on a Raspberry Pi Pico, along with the differences between MicroPython and Circuit Python. The first things I upgraded were Omnibot’s eyes which are now LED arrays in the form of Adafruit LED backpacks.
Omnibot uses the original motors to move around and also has a Pico inside the original remote to control the robot. The two picos communicate using Bluetooth to send and receive movement commands. I was really pleased that I managed to finish Omnibot by Christmas, just in time to pass around the chocolates:
Although Omnibot is technically complete, there is more functionality that I would like to include and I’ve reached the limit of what I can achieve using a Pico so this project is set to continue! For my birthday this year I received a Raspberry Pi Zero, camera and power supply so I’m currently working on giving Omnibot a brain upgrade, introducing some AI capabilities with the camera and giving him a voice too. So watch this space for further updates!
You can check out the current Pico code for Omnibot on Github.
Ferdinand the Furby
Ferdinand was another eBay purchase. The idea behind him was to give him a real voice, discussing this with my children, who helped to take the furby apart, we decided we wanted him to sound like a posh butler and we renamed him Ferdinand. We threw in a bit of random speech too about world domination, just for fun!
Ferdinand has, so far been programmed with a micro:bit as I wanted the code to be understood by the children, it works well except the micro:bit and breakout board to power the motor are too big to fit back inside the body! The next steps are to switch over to a Raspberry Pi Pico for the brain instead.
Here’s Ferdinand in action:
You can view the code in MakeCode for the project so far, here.
Pico-Bot
Pico-Bot is the first robot that I’ve designed and started building completely from Scratch, using 3D modelling and printing to create the body and hold everything together. Pico-Bot will eventually look like the cartoon robot at the top of the page! One of my stocking fillers at Christmas was a Pimoroni display for Pico, I made a little face appear which gave me the idea to turn it into a little robot. I’ve since added a Pimoroni Pico Omnibus which enables me to use the screen, alongside a Motor Shim to power the wheels. It’s still a work in progress but I’m also working on 3D printing the body of the robot, a surround for the screen, and somewhere to store the batteries, of course!
R2D2
The only finished project in the list (although I may still make some improvements) is R2D2. I had the inspiration to make R2D2 at work when I was about to throw away a Coffee Mate tub and realised that combined with a domed smoothie lid it would make a great R2D2! The parts subsequently sat in my maker space for months until Star Wars Day, which reminded me of the project, once again! R2D2 is powered by a micro:bit in a Wukong breakout board by Elecfreaks and also makes use of their mp3 module. I was going to mount him onto a CuteBot so he would be remote-controlled but I ran out of time so maybe that will be a fun extension for May 4th 2026!
You can view the MakeCode for R2D2 here.
R2D2 is similar, in functionality, to the robots we make in school workshops when we deliver our Robot Petting Zoo or Scrap:bot Creator sessions. If you would like to find out more about school workshops click here to visit the U Can Too site.
I hope you liked meeting the robots! I’m sure I’ll be posting again soon with updates on their latest brain upgrades. Follow me on BlueSky to keep up-to-date!