Modifying a Cheap Hexapod Robot Toy to Run on a Raspberry Pi

David Pride was out shopping for Christmas when he came across a cute little hexapod robot toy called Tobbie. It’s a simple and inexpensive toy that’s sold by many different brands under many different names, but it was adorable so Pride decided to take it home. It didn’t take him long to determine that, while Tobbie is cute, it isn’t exactly the smartest robot in the world. So, Pride decided to do what any maker would do and made it smarter with the addition of a Raspberry Pi.

The Tobbie-style hexapod robots are so affordable because they utilize clever mechanics in place of expensive electronics. Instead of walking with a dozen servos like a typical hexapod robot, Tobbie walks using just two motors and a pretty ingenious series of mechanisms. One motor turns Tobbie’s head, and the other drives the walking mechanism that causes Tobbie to move in whatever direction its head is pointing. As nifty as that is, Tobbie wasn’t gifted with much intelligence, and was only capable of infrared following or avoidance.

Pride really like the aesthetics and engineering of the robot, so he used a Raspberry Pi Zero W to turn it into a far more intelligent bot called Zobbie. To do that, he replaced the original head with a larger 3D-printed one. Inside of that is the Raspberry Pi Zero W, a PiBorg ZeroBorg Motor Controller, a Pimoroni Blinkt HAT with LEDs, a DC/DC converter, and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module for computer vision and autonomous control.

The Pimoroni Blinkt LEDs are used to give Zobbie expressive, color-changing eyes, and the ZeroBorg Motor Controller drives the original head and leg motors. A PlayStation 3 controller is connected to the Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth, and can be used to walk Tobbie around. Pride plans to add some autonomous navigation abilities via OpenCV soon, and has provided his STL files and code if you’d like to build your own Zobbie.