Drawbots 3/3 Hurba Drawbot
What is this robot?
Hurba Drawbot is a robot of the Hungarian Association of Robot Builders. Its function is essentially a course accessory: at the courses held by the association the participants could assemble and program one copy of this robot during a one-day weekend course. The target audience of the course was the 10-12-year-old age group, but sometimes we kept it for adults, and we found that due to the professionalism of the topic, we were able to impart just as much new knowledge to adults – who are not employed in engineering or IT fields – as to children.
The aim of the course is for the participants to enter the complex world of robotics and programming armed with some basic knowledge of mechanics, electronics and programming and with a robot they have already assembled with their own hands.
My duties around the robot
As I mentioned in the article about my very first robot, I basically joined the robot building association to motivate myself to create, and also to gain new knowledge more easily. The courses proved to be a great opportunity for this.
At first, I only participated in the courses as an assistant, then after learning how to use the association’s laser cutter, I took on the production and procurement of parts, and over time I conducted the courses as an instructor.
After a while, it was suggested that what was taught in the courses could also be put into the form of a video course. And the students would receive the robot by mail delivery, packed together with the instructions for assembly and programming.
For this, I redesigned the robot and figured out the packaging process – everything adapted to laser cutting. I also demonstrated the assembly of the robot in the videos belonging to the course and in the attached booklet.
Summary
The in person courses were very successful for a while. There was a period when we held sold-out sessions several times in a row. However, there was not as much demand for the e-learning version of the course as we had hoped, so over time we stopped producing the kits.
The fact that the time, money and energy invested in the e-learning course was not reimbursed demotivated several members, including me, so after some time I rather turned to developing other kinds of gadgets, for which I no longer used the association’s laser cutter but my own 3D printer. These devices are less for commercial use or for presentation purposes, but they are rather aimed at some specific problem or simply are gadgets developed from random experimentation.