Tobee is built from affordable off the shelf and readily available parts and provides a fun way to explore the exciting possibilities of owning your own personal robotic pal.  By building a robot from basic parts you will learn about robotics, electronics, computing, 3D printing and modelling. While assembling the robot, you will be introduced to the basics in all these skills; you can chose to focus on a particular area by modifying any aspects of the design. In this way you control your own learning. For those of you that prefer to do these things as part of a class, the Creative Robotix team provides supporting training workshops and vacation camps (see section entitle ‘Workshops’, further down).

Codee is a slightly more sophisticated form of Tobee, being slightly taller, with a head, body, arms that can be customized (which , introduces a whole new line of fun, in addition to learning about the technology). In addition, it’s slightly taller frame  means it can carry more sensors and electronic/mechanical capabilities you can design and customise.

Robee is a customized head applied to our Codee base platform and demonstrates how our platform can be adapted to create different robot characters.

Timee is a customized skin applied to our Codee base platform.  To generate this skin we applied a creative processes known as Micro Science Fiction Prototyping.  To give you an idea how this works we have documented the steps in an instructable (see ‘Useful Links’ at end of this page).  You can follow these steps to create your very own customised skins.  While we produced the Timee design with 3D printing you may want to consider alternative materials for you own design which a readily available and work well in a classroom setting.  We’ve found thick cardboard and foam board to be very suitable.  To help you facilitate the creative process we have put together a micro-SFP classroom resource which can be used to capture ideas (see ‘Useful Links’, towards end of this page).

If you don’t have access to 3D printing or the time to source the individual electronic components you can buy the entire kits directly by emailing Dr Simon Egerton at La Trobe University.