LEGO Unikitty MOC in lifesize

This is my latest MOC: A LEGO Unikitty! It is 180cm tall and features a rotating head and sparkly eyes. It took several month from planning to finish and I never used as many pink bricks in my life. Still, the color combination is just sooo cute. The neck uses my LEGO compatible thrust ball bearing.You can now purchase the LEGO Digital Designer LXF file for only 50 NZD so that you can build the Unikitty yourself. Just pay via PayPal and I will email you the file:


Have a look at the video to see how it works:

Here are some photographs and the full resolution photos are available at Flickr. I also included a screenshot from LEGO Digital Designer and a render from Bluerender.

 

There is also a Saint Etienne Version of the video:

Governor General visits the HIT Lab NZ

The Govenor General, Jerry Mateparae, visited the HIT Lab NZ on March 9th, 2016. We presented our main research areas to him, including Human-Robot Interaction. Jerry Mateparae seemed to enjoy the performance of our robots, but his Aides-de-Camp looked, well, I am not sure how to read his face. Continue reading “Governor General visits the HIT Lab NZ”

LEGO compatible thrust ball bearing

To rotate an axial load LEGO developed the turn table. For light loads this works great but the friction increases dramatically with heavy loads. This thrust ball bearing uses standard LEGO balls to transform the friction into rotations. This allows the two disks to easily rotate. The balls and an additional rim keep the two disks in place.

A motor can be attached on the inside to power the rotation. Even the smallest LEGO motor is sufficient to easily rotate this 2 kg load. This thrust ball bearing is fully LEGO compatible and even allows studs to be attached to top half. Standard 14.2 mm LEGO balls can be used. The bearing measures 20 studs across and is three bricks high. This should be big enough for even the biggest crane or MOC display.

The 3D data is available from the Autodesk Gallery and GrabCAD.