Milton the Robot Toaster

thingiverse

This is a roughly 1/4 scale functional model of Milton, the useless robot toaster introduced in season six of the animated TV show Archer. Using an Arduino-compatible board and a motor shield, I built it with an animated LED display, toasting that pops up and down at random intervals, and the ability to drive around in a predetermined pattern. This was my first big Arduino project, so there's almost certainly a better way to write the instructions for what I want it to do (mills vs delays), but it does everything I wanted so I am pleased with that. I scaled the model up on the screen, which ended up making it nine inches tall and it was still barely big enough inside to fit some of the components and mechanisms. Ignoring the FAQ for the motor shield, I initially designed the robot around a 9V battery pack, which seemed more than sufficient in early testing but proved unable to handle the weight of the completed robot. There's plenty of room inside down low, so it now runs on an eight-AA battery pack. You can see the finished bot in action here: