The goal is to make a robot that can be controlled by any protester while sitting at a coffee shop, in a park or anywhere else. This will be achieved by simply accessing a web page, where one can watch, hear and speak through it. That’s why we created a self-balancing robot, with a rigid sturdy frame, a megaphone on the top as a symbol of protest and also as a way to talk to people.

This robot is 1,60m (5’/3’’) tall that self-balances in 2 wheels, driven by two Matsushita GMX-6MP013A DC Motors, and controlled by a Sabertooth 2X25A or Cytron 13A, 5-25V Motor Controller. The brain of the operation is a beaglebone black with an MPU6050 accelerometer and gyroscope and also optical encoders on each motor.

A shield was created to organize the components. We are using a 24V battery for the motors, and with some voltage regulators, we can power up the beaglebone and the megaphone as well.

The megaphone is a DH-12, that has a siren and a microphone, that we hacked and placed a wire to connect to a sound jack output, enabling us to connect the megaphone to almost any device (ex: smartphone, MP3 player, laptop, you name it).

The system can be controlled remotely through Wi-Fi, using a smartphone hotspot connected to 3G or 4G network. We also developed an interface to control the robot over the web page or a gamepad or even a keyboard.

Here is a video of a visit to the University of Madeira with a previous version.