Who In Chicago Builds Life-Size R2D2's?

I would really love to build an R2D2... who in Chicago also builds them or wants to build one?

No one in our club does but you may want to check out a droid-building website and see if there's any local folk who can join you in building a race that will destroy us all. Or at least bring you a beer during a Sox game.

R2D2....relatively expensive to build,

and if truely robotic, (remote controlled),

a very seriously diverse set of skills are needed.


Why not start small and build a mousebott for the empire

These guys are probably your best bet:
http://www.astromech.net/

Didn't the Quad City brother's build one?

ED SED: and if truely robotic, (remote controlled) ,a very seriously diverse set of skills are needed.

Bah! If you want authenticity you have to obtain yourself a little person like Lucas did. R/C R2's are for posers!


D'
"I bought some new droids from the freaky little hooded creatures. The tall one is effeminate and annoying, and I think the little one has an amputee inside!"

Sounds like an interesting project. If you wind up trying to build one yourself this summer, let me know--I'm a electrical engineering major and I might be able to help you out a little bit.

I do believe they did and by way of it met GL.

I don't care too much for an radio controlled R2, I just want a full-size replica... I wish they still sold the Don Post replica R2's.

The roomba people have just started advertising a new robot that washes floors and they are really pushing the 'robot' word in ads. Maybe you could contact them and suggest an R2 that does windows and you can have your very own for the suggestion (ps, I'd take one too)

SkyMall has mini R2 units for sale. I think they are at SkyMall.com

Heck yes they do. I almost bought one. Its actually from (Hammacher Schlemmer (sp?)

Yes the Quad City brothers built and R2 and let me just say, when it is done it isn't done. Getting it around and such is a pain since they are heavy and motors most of the time will not make it zip around. At C3 the R2's kind of reminded me of a car. You will always have something that needs to be done to it or such. Example almost every one that was in the droid builders room was being tinkered with or fixed at some point during the weekend. Also everything can be perfect too. But they seem to embody R2's personality. Everything is great then he decides oh let me not have my lights work now or what not.

It will take time and skill and money too. But good luck to you if you decide to build one.

You forgot to mention the invisible gremlins that come by in the night and mess with everything while you're sleeping. I remember one of my robotics projects at UIUC where we lost control of our 180 lb battlebot in a narrow hall during that day's first radio test (it was working perfectly the previous night). As it careened down the hall at almost 15 mph, some unfortunate CS nerd walked out of the computer lab looking the wrong way and was promptly blasted (roll d20 for the number of bruises...).

So the CSI episode where the guy is killed by a 'bot is not too far-fetched.

If you are going for accuracy, these were garbage as I understand.

I haven't seen CSI ever, but I can say that being killed by robots is incredibly easy. Heck, people lose fingers to circular saws all the time, which is why they came up with this sucker. Pretty amazing stuff.

Here's two more robot stories of mine:

-When we were testing the robot I mentioned earlier, one of my friends gently bumped me in the shins with the bot when I wasn't paying attention. It had so much mass and torque (quad 2 HP motors geared down) that I had to dive sideways to keep from falling on top of it (not a good idea when the motors and electronics drew a total of 600 amps under stall conditions).

-When we were preparing to drill holes in the frame (same robot) to bring the bot under the competiton weight requirements, one guy pulled one of the fat power cables off our set of automotive batteries and in doing so accidentally touched the metal frame of the robot with the bare wire. The result was a huge electrical fireball that actually welded the power cable to the aluminum frame--we actually had to hack them apart later. He had the presence of mind to yank the ground cable as the sparks blew up in his face--if he hadn't, he probably would've been showered with battery acid as the batteries exploded.

Edit: Yes, we did consider affixing a javelin/cattle prod to the front of the robot and just frying the living crap out of the other robots, but that kind of weapon was banned, unfortunately. If R2-D2's prod could pump out 600 amps at 24V, we would've seen minus a few Jawas, eh?