When you think of WALL-E – Disney’s loveable yellow garbage-compactor robot on treads – you probably don’t think about hobby robotics. But a group of enthusiasts have built an open domain robotics community inspired by the animated film. The movie follows the story of a robot named WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class) which is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future, and who eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity. The movie did significantly well at the box office, bringing in over $500 million dollars worldwide.
An online forum called The WALL-E Builder’s Group has built its own life-size, fully functional replica of the WALL-E robot from scratch. Bruce Shields, who organized the community, says that when the movie trailer for WALL-E first previewed in 2007 he found a robot that everyone could love. In its first few weeks, the group collected about 400 members and quickly organized efforts to identify every image or slice of video that could offer a hint to how the robot functioned. The community currently numbers over 3000 members worldwide.
According to a recent article in Wired Magazine, the community met with significant challenges in building the WALL-E replicate: “Without blueprints or schematics, creating a life-size or even a scaled-down version of the Wall-E robot isn’t easy. The head was the most difficult part, says Shields. He hand-formed the sheet aluminum around two LED flashlights, and connected PVC elbows to the back. He formed faux solar panels on the head and put it all together in his workshop. For the arms, Shields took a PVC pipe from a sink drain and sized a smaller pipe to fit inside it, which allowed the arms to move in and out. He documented the process in this blog. The faux rust and weathering came from a paint job.”
The WALL-E Builder’s Group has not stopped with only building the WALL-E replica but is also focused on bringing other robots in the movie to life. Matt Ebisu, a member of the group, first built M-O, a cleaner robot. “My focus is on the secondary robots, M-O, Eve and Auto,” he says. “And M-O is just very comedic, funny, cute and interesting in the way he has been designed.” A tiny robot with a box-like frame, a red light at top of his head and a brush permanently stuck between its hands, M-O plays a charming yet small part in the movie.
The WALL-E Builder’s Community should be commended for its innovative and insightful approach to not only setting out to develop a life-like replica of the movie robot, WALL-E, but also for organizing a passionate and committed open-domain community that helped accomplish this goal. As reported in my last blog post, the future of building advanced, complex robotics systems will depend on the leveraging of organizational, social, and intellectual forms of capital that can only be derived from an open source development methodology embraced by experts and enthusiasts alike.
Top 10 WALL-E Hacks – Hacked Gadgets – DIY Tech Blog
The fact that it holds a case is almost beside the fact when you see how much time and effort went into making the actual WALL-E robot. It was apparently built in 18 days but that seems hard to believe! …
In search of a do-it-yourself Wall-E
“There (are) tons of builders who are very interested in building Wall-E,” said Matt Ebisu, the 18-year-old Cupertino, Calif., college student who is the public representative of the group. “So far, we’ve had several different versions …
Hobbyists Rebuild Wall-E, One PVC Pipe at a Time
A Michigan-based pastor with a strong interest in robotics, he created the Wall-E builders’ group. In its first few weeks, the group collected about 400 members. And they tried to find each little nugget, image or slice of video that …
Look out, Rover. Robots are man's new best friend – CNET News
“The venture capital community is now starting to spend a lot of time getting to know this area,” said Pirjanian of Evolution Robotics, whose North Star localization software is used in WowWee’s Rovio. …. photos A look at some of the coolest and weirdest robotics projects to come out of universities’ R&D programs over the years. Day 3: In search of a do-it-yourself Wall-E The hobbyist robotics movement seen at Maker Faire goes much further than the popular festival. …
Tags: future of robotics, hobby robotics, WALL-E, WALL-E Builder's Group
