Roller-bot

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Roller-Bot is a non-intelligent light activated robot built upon a small paint roller. The rollerbot is a design that exemplifies the concept of minimal-engineering and is a copyrighted design developed in 1999, by Paul L. Discher, Director of Engineering Science Laboratories, Department of Electrical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Roller-bot project employed 10 mechanical and electrical components to create a powered non-intelligent robot vehicle activated by a flashlight or other a non-visible light source. Beside requiring no tools for final assembly this project only used 10 discrete components.

The project employed a rubber band drive belt that transferred rotation to the body of a paint roller cover. This unique propulsion method did not require any gears, or pulleys and employed a bare motor shaft and conventional geometry of the paint roller cover. Controlling and powering the motor was a photodiode and a single transistor acting as a light activated switch which applied DC electrical power from an on-board 9v battery.

Roller-Bot I was the first generation of the project followed by design improvements realized in the Roller-Bot II project deployed 5 months later. Both projects were administrated in "make-and-take" publicity projects in which the "kits" were given away free to student participants on the campus of Washington University. The Washington University RECORD covered the promotional giveway of roller-bots during engineers week March 1999 with this photo and caption: clipping courtesy: WU RECORD, March 25, 1999 (vol. 23 No.22)

Roller-Bot III, a new deployment of the classical Roller-Bot project was presented by Paul Discher in a paper and talk February 9, 2008, Kirkwood High School, for member teachers of the AAPT affiliate: The St. Louis Area Physics Teachers