Project: Make a Swarm of Gliding Vibrobots

What Is a Vibrobot?

A vibrobot, or vibrating robot, is a primitive bot that moves due to the shaking of a rotating eccentric (off-center) weight, usually a vibrating motor.

Three Vibrobots swarming.
Figure 3-4. Three Vibrobots swarming.

What It Does

Vibrating robots behave in lifelike ways without any electronic control through a combination of random movements and mechanical programming due to their shape and distribution of weight.

Where It Came From

Probably the most famous example of a vibrating robot is the Bristlebot—the Throwie of the robot world. First appearing on the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories ...

Get Making Simple Robots now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.