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Poppy Ergo Jr: How to build an open source and open hardware 3D printed robot for education

Poppy ergo Jr is open source 3D printed robot developped by Inria laboratory in Bordeaux, France.

This robot "Ergor Jr" was developped following an first initiative that was to create a humanoid 3D printed robot called Poppy in 2012. This robot was built with the open source and open hardware spirit.

Let's go back to Poppy ergo jr. Poppy ergo jr was developed to introduce STEM education to the students.

It includes for less than $400 :

A couple dynamixel motors than can track the motor position, temperature, torque and more.
3D design for the plastic parts that allows you 3D print the differents parts with a 3D printer and PLA filament .
A bunch of wires to connect the motors
A Raspberry pi board which gonna be the brain (a server will be implemented to the board to control the robot).
A ethernet cable (RJ45 cable) to connect our robot to the computer.

After getting all the hardware, you can now find a tutorial online on their website with a step by step process allowing you to install an modified Linux based Operating system image on your Raspberry pi.

When it's done, you can program your robot with Python or with Snap (a copy of scratch : very well know from the young public to create video games ;-).

When you create, assemble and program this robot, it allows you to see and understand all the disciplines like 3D printing, robotics, mechanics, electronics, programming and more integrated to this machine.

So the students can learn how to program, create game where they can interact with Poppy ergo jr.

The platform evolves all the time with more project, education goals and a tutorial on how to build your poppy ergo Jr Robot step by step. An online community is also availaible for the project if you have any questions on anything. You can reach it with the following link : Poppy Ergo Jr

Two videos are available right after this article. They introduce some of the activities you can do with the 3D printed robot.

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