A BristleBot is a tiny robot make from a toothbrush head, a small vibrating motor, and a battery. BristleBots were developed by EvilMadScientist Laboratories, and shared with the public in the Tinkering Studio as part of the Open MAKE: circuits event, during which we explored a variety of fun and instructive things to do with electric components.
Essentially, a BristleBot is a toothbrush head with a pager motor strapped to its back. It’s easy to make a vibrating motor by attaching an offset weight to its axle, but scavenging for discarded pager motors (nowadays more commonly found inside of cell phones) is also effective. The vibrations imparted by the motor flex the bristles of the toothbrush, and because of the angle of the bristles, propel the robot forward… more or less! Part of the fun of BristleBots is figuring out how to make them do what you want, and play with the placement of the motor, and ways to stabilize the whole contraption. We even built a couple of racetracks to test out the bots, and let them run around for a while.
Where do get your pager motors from? Do you give them to the visitors after they make them?
Hi Anitra,
We get our pager motors from Jameco, but surplus stores are also a good source of all kinds of motors, usually for very cheap.
We don’t typically let visitors keep the BristleBots they make, or we’d run out of motors very quickly. We believe that the process of making them is the real rewarding part of the activity, and for that reason we give everyone as much time as they want to make as many versions and iterations as they want.
Thanks for the quick reply. I’ll let you know what I discover.
Can this be done with a pancake vibrating motor? I’m a teacher and want to do this with my class. The pancake batteries are much cheaper, but I’m not sure they’ll work. Anyone out there know? Thanks!
Hi Amy,
We have never tried pancake motors specifically, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. You will have to figure out how to put a little offset weight on the axle of the motor, though: that is what makes the whole thing vibrate and imparts movement to the brush. See our other activities called Scribbling Machines for ideas on that, but a little bit of hot melt glue stick might be the ticket.
The best thing is to try it yourself, I’m sure you can figure out a way to do it!