Kickstarter of the Week: Multiplo

I

t's no R2-D2, but this week's Kickstarter will help you build your very own robot. The creators of Multiplo started out as educators, and when they noticed a lack of teaching material for teaching robotics, they decided to take it upon themselves to fill the void.

From there, they started prototyping robots by cutting acrylic and installing wiring to it, and from there, they started giving lessons and designing parts. The parts can change location to perform different functions.

Multiplo's remote.

Their robot building kit has since been used in schools, science experiments, and even at the industry. The kit they have produced includes everything you need to build your own robot, but you can also add your own parts to it to customize it. The result is a collection of mechanical parts that are easy to assemble and break down, but are difficult to actually break, and are simple to personalize to what you want the robot to do.

They have also built their own controller for the robot, since they wanted something that was not only user friendly, but powerful and hackable—again, good for customization. Their DuinoBot controller has motor outputs, sensorconnectors, and is compatible with Arduino.

With the kit, they include a simple set of instructions for beginning programmers, but they also offer Graphical Software, which helps users with no previous programming experience learn how to do so. The software is free, Open Source, and was also funded through Kickstarter.

With their kit, you can build a robot in about 45 minutes (or so they say), and with 19 days to go and $92,258 pledged (their goal was just $15,000), we'd say people are pretty confident in what they're offering up.

Check out this video for more details on Multiplo: