This Is the Droid You're Looking For

Tejas Shah is a huge robot fan, so when he heard about the Droid Depot at Disneyland — where you can build your own Star Wars droid — he was sold. However, his excitement faded once he saw the large price tag and the apparent poor build quality of the droids in person. Shah knew he could do a better job building his own droid, so he got to work on his own functional 40%-scale R2-D2 at home.

Shah started with the dome that makes up R2-D2’s head. He was able to snag some existing STL files, which saved a good deal of design time. The parts were produced with a 3D printer, but the result was much too rough to meet his expectations. To fix things up, Shah iteratively sanded and primed the prints, using filler putty to correct larger imperfections. It was a lot of work, but the final result was perfectly smooth. A few coats of paint topped off the dome.

Next, Shah worked on the electronics. A Raspberry Pi Pico W serves as the main controller of the droid. It interfaces with a 16-channel PWM board that drives all of the LEDs and servos required to make R2-D2 light up and move the periscope, holoprojector, and gripper arms.

With that out of the way, the main body of the robot was printed. It required the same sanding, priming, filling, and painting work as the dome. The head was then attached to the body using a slip ring. 3D-printed omni wheels and standard drive wheels with TPU tires were installed to enable movement.

Next, an Arduino Nano was wired to the main controller board. The Arduino is connected to motor driver boards, which control the large DC motors that move R2-D2 on command. Shah used an old Xbox controller to drive the robot wirelessly. A DFPlayer Mini MP3 Player was also wired to the Arduino to give the robot a voice.

When all was said and done, Shah’s droid probably didn’t cost any less than the ones he saw at the Droid Depot, but it definitely looks way better and is far more capable. Be sure to check out the video below to see his custom R2 unit in action.