How to Build a Robot

General Robot Building Questions | The Big Picture

Building your own robot can be a fun and instructional experience. It can be a little frustrating though when you are not sure about a certain aspect of the build. This is a guide that will help you get your robot up and running. We will go over some robot basics, help you with part selection, and give some assembly advice. To get started you can answer some of the questions on our Custom Robot Request Page. These will help you figure out the type of robot you want to build and help a little with part selection. You may also submit the form if you would like to skip the DIY and have SuperDroid Robots and its professional staff build it for you.

Some questions you will want to ask yourself

What do I want the robot to do?
How will it be controlled? Remote controlled or autonomous? Wireless or tethered?
What environment will I be using it in? Indoors? Outdoors? Does it need to be protected from the elements?
What type of terrain will it be used on?
What are my size and weight restrictions?
Does it need to be able to handle a payload?
What kind of runtime will I need?
What is my budget?
Do I want to build using just parts, a kit, or a completely assembled ready-to-run robot?

The basics of our robot kits

Our robot kits are developed based on years of experience designing custom robots. All the components are designed to work together. If you do not have much experience building robots, the easiest thing to do will be to start with one of our robot kits. If you start from scratch you'll have to make a lot of decisions about size/speed of motors, size and type of wheels, type and capacity of batteries, and many more. Making these decisions can require experience and some trial and error. With our robot kits, we have made many of these decisions already and taken most of the guesswork out of the equation. All of our robot kits have options listed at the bottom of the page allowing you to configure the robot with parts that will work together.

Most of our robot kits can be purchased in kit form (unassembled) or assembled. If you have never built a robot or you do not have much experience with soldering and mechanical assembly, we recommend you opt for us to assemble it for you. We will have our experienced technicians assemble and test it. If anything is not right (such as a defective motor or motor controller, battery charger, etc.) we will replace it and make sure everything is ready to run when you receive it.

Components

A robot can be as simple as a few components or could be more complicated depending on the task it will perform. At a minimum, you will need a chassis, wheels, motors, batteries, and some hardware. Add in a motor controller and an RC transmitter/receiver and you have a remote controlled robot. The picture below shows the layout of one of our basic robots and points out the main components.

For a deeper dive into each component see the pages below:

Assembly

Once you have all of your components picked out, you can now start the assembly process. Generally you'll want to start with the mechanical assembly. This typically includes mounting the motors, wheels/tracks, batteries, motor controller, etc. Once you have everything mounted you can start wiring it. Linked below are some pages that will help with the assembly process. There are a few video tutorials of us building some of our standard robots that give you a good idea of what is involved and what tools you'll need. There are also several pages that will help you wire your robot.

How to Build a 4WD Robot

How to Build a Chain Drive 4WD Robot - IG52 DB

How To Build an IG32 DM 4WD Robot

Basic Wiring Guide

Motor Wiring Support

Soldering Techniques

Wire Crimping Support

How to add Encoders to a Robot