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Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 2

26 The Ultimate Palm Robot

T here are two approaches to building the robot—the right way and the
wrong way.

Just kidding: you can build your Palm Robot from a kit or build it from
scratch, and either approach is fine. Consider this: if you are more interested
in playing with your robot than in dealing with all the nuts and bolts, or if you
are a beginner when it comes to electronics, then you will probably want to
build the robot from a kit.

On the other hand, if you’re an adventurous beginner or an experienced
hobbyist, then you may want to do more of the work yourself. In that case, you
will want to get the parts yourself rather than relying on a kit.

In this chapter, we’ll talk about the kit approach for the more casual
robotocists out there. And if you’re more hard-core hobbyist, stick around this
chapter as well, since we will identify the needed parts and where you can get
them. We will also take a very brief look in this chapter at alternate and addi-
tional parts that can be used with your robot.

Getting the Kit
As we mentioned in the previous chapter, Carnegie Mellon licensed the PPRK
to Acroname, Inc. Acroname redesigned the original kit to make it easier to as-
semble, take apart, and ensure proper alignment of the various components.
This makes it extremely easy for you to get all the parts you need to build your
own robot. Acroname (check out Figure 2-1) has done all the work of getting
the parts from the different suppliers and packaging them together for you.
This is convenient for those of you who are just getting into the hobby of ro-
botics and may not have a lot of spare parts lying around. On the other hand, if
you happen to have a controller board, roller wheels, or death ray lasers just
lying around the house, you can get the other individual components you
need from various retailers. Later in this chapter we’ll show you what parts
you need and how to get those parts.

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Monday, May 12, 2003 10:17:22 AM