
I have always had a thing for the service droids that were popular among robot enthusiast in the 70s-80s, but finding one of these vintage bots is near impossible now. Even so, I was lucky enough to recently find a listing on eBay of some new-old-stock RB5X parts (one of the classic 80’s robot platforms). Only the parts that make up the metal shell and two of the wheels were included, so I will have to fabricate the rest myself.
I started by picking out some motors and drilling some mounting holes for them. A couple of cheap office chair castors completed the wheels. Then I 3d printed panels to snap into all the places where plastic panels would have been originally. Next up is figuring out what I want to use as the “brains”…

