Whiskers (robot)

  

This is a robot I made one sunday morning just for kicks, and it took about a couple of hours to build and a lot more to test. It has two whiskers (hence the robot's name) and two motors, when one of the whiskers hits a wall or obstacle, the wheel on the same side will keep spinning forward while the wheel on the opposite side will spin in the opposing direction. This action will cause the robot to move away from the wall or obstacle. If both whiskers happen to bump into a wall/obstacle the robot will move backwards then continue. This 'robot' took a surprisingly short amount of time to build due to the fact that it contains no integrated circuits, it doesn't even use transistors or diodes. All it employes are some clever wire connections that simulate logic.

Here's a video of Whiskers in action:
whiskers.mov