Bugs, the RP2040-Powered RoboBunny, Brings the Whirr of Servos to Easter Celebrations
Driven by MicroPython code running on a Pimoroni Servo 2040 development board, this 3D-printed rabbit builds on a cat design.
Roboticist and educator Kevin McAleer has put together a little something to bring the gentle whirring of servos alongside some Easter cheer: Bugs the RoboBunny.
"What i was thinking," McAleer explains of Bugs' origin as a spin-off from an earlier open-source 3D-printed cat robot project, "was why not just take the head design and […] basically just make this a little bit different, so make the ears larger, make the profile less like a cat more like a rabbit shape, but essentially to keep everything else the same."
The project, as they so often do, spiraled from there. While the initial RoboBunny was simply a cat with bigger ears, subsequent iterations included modified rear legs, the replacement of the cat tail with a simply "floofy tail" made from a pom-pom, and a work-in-progress hopping ability.
Internally, the robot uses a simple USB Type-C battery pack originally designed for charging phones on the go, a Pimoroni Servo 2040 control board built around the popular Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, and DS-29MG servos.
The project isn't quite finished yet, though: "[The] hopping function is what I need to be working on next, really," McAleer explains. "I'm essentially just going to take each one of these [legs] and I'm going to work through each stage of the hopping motion one bit at a time, and that will get me where I need to be."
The full video, which includes a look at each earlier incarnation, is available on McAleer's YouTube channel now; its MicroPython source code, forked from McAleer's earlier PicoCat project, is available on GitHub under an unspecified open-source license.