HAP-E: Wall-E's estranged cousin

[Rbotguy]

Hydraulic Augmented Plow - Earth-class

I build robots both professionally and as a hobby. Unfortunately, my hobby robots look like cr@!. See Robots by Jeff - at robotguy.net for proof. But I'm really looking to step up my game. I'm interested in creating a robot that lives on my desk as a pet and giving it as much personality as possible, but all of my robots look like boring cubes. Ive been reading the forums for a while now looking for tips on making them look better. My biggest shortfall, I believe, is vision. I have been inspired by the The Doctor's "Three Legs" and NylonGag's "Scratch-built delivery ship" but I'm working on the ability to form an interesting vision of what the model should look like, then build toward that vision. I am posting this build hoping to get feedback and ideas on how to further this ability. To this end, here's my first attempt at HAP-E:


HAP-E is from the Wall-E universe, maybe from another city than Wall-E. Here is his main body shape, cobbled from .060" styrene. This is as far from a parallelepiped as I have ever gotten. This is also my first foray into airbrushing (I picked up an Iwata Revolution last week) and an attempt at weathering. The idea is to make him look as beat up as Wall-E did. This is a brown base, with salt and a yellow main coat. Then I rubbed off the salt and added a black wash and some more reddish brown streaks.


The motors and wheels.


Using the salt technique to weather the bulldozer blade.


Here are the eyes and some light-pipe so that I can light them up from within.


Each eye gets its own RGB LED so I can light them up any color.


Here's the eyes mounted.



and painted with some "brass" acrylic and a black wash.


He needed a bit more personality so I added a smile. Does this work?


More greebles needed, so I built up a battery pack from thin styrene.


and mounted it to the back, along with some "strapping" and a heat sink.


Then I masked off a section to add a solar panel.


Finally I added a (frickin') laser, because who doesn't love lasers?


Here's a shot to show the scale.


I'm thinking he still needs something on the other side to balance out the laser (communications antenna?), but that might just be the engineer in me looking for symmetry. Thoughts?

 

[Invicta]

That is CLASSIC! I really like it. Nice job. ):thumbsup

 

[joez2391]

I think that it would look cool with some black striping on the bulldozer part too, almost like this http://www.dexters.co.nz/wp-content/themes/shopperpress/thumbs/T4710.jpg?&w=180&h=145. really cool design though, might look interesting with an antenna too, really refreshing to see unique builds like this

 

[sjorsjo91]

He needs some happy eyebrows. Would definitely help in giving him some more character.

 

[Rbotguy]

Thanks for the comments, all!

I think that it would look cool with some black striping on the bulldozer part too

Something like this?

He needs some happy eyebrows. Would definitely help in giving him some more character.

Awesome idea. That will take a little more work. However, if I try really hard, I might even be able to animate them. I've got some extremely teeny planetary gearmotors that just might do the trick.

 

[joez2391]

Something like this?

YES! that's exactly what I was picturing in my head, I think it'll add a little bit of contrast and will make it look much more industrial. the paint chipping and rust on the rest looks great as it is, just figured the lines would give it that extra punch!

 

[YenChih Lin]

I like this robot, but it's somewhat missing the "Wall-E" robots vibe, if you know what I mean… I guess it's a cute and relateable face with the blue LED eyes. Most of them are designed by resemblemling something familiar like Burn-E's head was modeled after a welder's mask, EVE sleek and clean appearance was designed by the head designer of the iPhone. I know, not every robot from Wall-E had a face, but conveyed much personality by it's actions like Vaq-m. It's fresh in my mind, because I recently watched Wall-E again You could put some yellow flashing warning strobes on the top on Hap-E like the Secur-T.

Some pics of not so cute in your face Wall-E robots for inspirations:

With eyes:

 

[tek2graphics]

Very nice work! Looks great!

 

[vixr]

maybe a grille below the eyes...a sort of mouth. Could be happy or grimly determined... a strobe opposite the laser would look cool.

 

[Keycube]

maybe a grille below the eyes...a sort of mouth. Could be happy or grimly determined... a strobe opposite the laser would look cool.

I like the idea of a grille as well; after looking at some pictures of real 'dozers, grilles seem to be more vertically oriented and may be better suited to a sort of nose? I like the thought of the topline of the blade serving as his subtly smiling mouth. JMHO.

Here's a little collection of cartoon 'dozers. Maybe some lights above his eyes acting as the aforementioned eyebrows?

bulldozer - Google Search


This is a really cute little piece! Well done!

 

[v3d]

Nice work. It really looks like part of the WALL-E universe.

 

[Rbotguy]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. A lot of really good ideas here. This build was intended to be a learning prototype, so HAP-E may get abandoned (awwww) in order to start from scratch with what I've learned so far.

I threw together a quick test of the eyebrows, something like Johnny5 had.

The first three would be achievable with a single motor, but the last expression would require separate motors for each eyebrow. I think I would probably be better off, if I was going to use two motors, to have two ganged degrees of freedom. So both eyebrows would tilt together and raise/lower together. If anyone is interested, I can document my work on the internals, otherwise I'll just post the cosmetic stuff.


A grill is a good idea but I think, in keeping the blade as the "mouth", a grill would have to represent a nose. Here's some quick photoshop tests of different grills:

I know, not every robot from Wall-E had a face, but conveyed much personality by it's actions like Vaq-m.

I've actually done quite a bit of studying, mostly from animation, on how to convey personality/emotion through movements. My favorite is Luxo, because the animators didn't take any liberties with the physics/structure of the lamp. It only moved in ways that a normal lamp can be moved. Wall-E on the other hand has degrees of freedom that just aren't physically possible (at least with current technology ;-).