Summer Project- Tree climbing robot

[Technochicken]

I thought I would share my summer project. I designed and built a robot to climb trees. It was mostly built out of aluminum bar. It is controlled by an Arduino, but the rest of the electronics I did myself.

Lots of pictures and a full writeup:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Tree-Climbing-Robot/

[Twigsoffury]

how heavy is that son of a b@#tch?

are those sewing machine needles?

and that is pretty sweet.

[Technochicken]

Thanks!

It weighs in at about 3.75 lbs.

They aren't needles, but that's pretty close. They are cut off t-pins, which I found at my local fabric store.

[mDust]

Looks pretty interesting. What about branches? Any way for it to navigate around the circumference of the trunk?

Is that you in the video? You should make another video where you glance confidently at the camera as you put it on the tree and then don't jerk your hands under it every time it moves.

[Technochicken]

It can't do anything about branches, it can just go straight up. If I built another one, I could do something about that, but at this point it is too late.

Yep, that's me in the video. I get a bit nervous when it's climbing, because if it fell some of the electronics would be toast. Now that you mention it, I do look a bit twitchy in the video though

[x88x]

Haha, nice! I like it. ...just don't let it try and climb your leg..

[Twigsoffury]

Yep, that's me in the video. I get a bit nervous when it's climbing, because if it fell some of the electronics would be toast.

hah i don't blame you.

[Technochicken]

Got on Hack A Day!

http://hackaday.com/2011/08/23/tree-...ee/#more-53508

[x88x]

Congrats!

[mDust]

Nice! That's pretty cool.
I've been thinking about features for V1.2...
It should have an aim-able camera and red laser pointer mounted on top so you can shine the light on people. They'll look around expecting it to be coming from anywhere but the top of a freakin' tree. /Highfive