Salvius - First Prototype
The construction of Salvius began late one night near the end of November in 2008. The first version of the robot's body was composed of nothing more than some plexiglass, steel pipe, motors, and parts from a few remote-control cars. The robots arms could be controlled remotely using a standard radio control and there were no legs. I didn't have a gearbox to control the rotation of the robot's head so the robot could only face forward. The only speech capabilities that the robot possessed came from a speaker that could be connected to a radio or cd player to produce sounds.
The first prototype was weak and had a limited range of movement. The arms often tore themselves off of the plastic body when they moved. The 9.6 volt rechargeable battery that powered the arm's motors and the RF receiver was completely depleted after only a few minutes of use because of the great strain of having to supply power to so many motors.
After improving the construction of the robot by using strong metal axials to support the arms the construction of the robot was greatly improved but many improvements would still be necessarily before Salvius would be ready to do anything.
(robot side view)
