About our Silent Hill Nurse
Our Silent Hill Nurse head is quite a unique robot, built for Halloween in 2021. The robot was built using the insides of a spare drone that was having issues flying. It also uses a polystyrene mannequin head that we found randomly on the internet, and had lying around waiting for a purpose. Quadcopters use two clockwise motors and two anti-clockwise motors, which means that the motors can be arranged so that on a robot for instance, all the wheels run forward; 2 x anti-clockwise on the right, and 2 x clockwise on the left (looking from the front). Steering this robot, given it was originally a drone, is very challenging.
To start with, we built a base from oversized lollipop sticks and assembled them with allen bolts and small angular meccano brackets. It was a difficult base to make as the materials are not very sturdy to begin with, but they get even less so when they are painted, and are wet. We separated the drone from its limbs/frame and then integrated it into our new framework as delicately as possible. Because we wanted to recycle the drone, we tried to keep the electronics intact, which presented a few problems when it came to organising the internals and making everything look neat.
Once in, we mounted the main 1080p drone camera on the front of the robot frame, and the second superfluous camera pointing up from inside, to view anyone opening up the robot. The main board, wifi board, SD card slot, switches and LEDs were mounted inside and hot glued into place. The relevant motors were mounted underneath, and we used the drone’s own motor mounts to secure them to our frame.
We used model plane hinges to create a hatch that opens at the top of our base and then we adjusted (trimmed with a hacksaw), our head to fit on the frame. We also made a cutout so we can access the power switch easily. The wheels were from a previous child’s toy truck, that we recycled. We designed a mechanism that allows us to connect the big wheels to the small motor shafts. The motors already had cogs that fitted on their shafts, so we blocked the center of our wheels with old cogs (using epoxy to secure them), and then drilled specific sized holes in those, to allow the smaller cogs to fit inside before we glued them again. A messy solution, but it worked. The images show how this was done.
We fixed a dragon eye to the head, gave it a base coat of grey, and then painted the area we knew would remain visible, so that it looked bloody and bruised. We then wrapped the head in normal cotton bandages. We made a simple nurse hat from paper (after realising a previous costume hat would not work), covered it in cloth and then also gave it a grey basecoat.
As I write this, our robot is mostly ready for halloween, however we still need to paint the bandages, and to make her look a little more scary. We may add LEDs or lasers as required. She fulfills the idea of a ‘puppet nurse’, being used to terrorise people, which is ideal on Halloween.
The result is a robot made from recycled parts (items we had lying around), that is capable of chasing someone and recording their screams in 1080p. As she is not finished (at least not as version 1.0), this page will be updated with text and images as we progress to her completion. We are also considering installing some different small motors, perhaps with a gearbox to give us a more controllable ratio, however that newer version will be further in the future.
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We would also love to see your versions of this robot!
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Full Stats:
Version: 1.0
Designation: Silent Hill Nurse
Drone Type: Simrex X900 Drone with optical flow positioning and 1080P HD Camera
Utility: Exploration/Fun/Scaring People
Purpose: Home Education/Halloween
Weight (total): 540g
SingleTrack Width: 4.5cm
Whole Track Width: 20cm
Drive: 4WD
Motor Reduction Ratio: 1:1
Relative Speed (to our other robots): Moderate
Microcontroller: Drone inbuilt boards
Camera 1: 110° wide angle FPV 1080p (1920*1080) – able to stream and record
Camera 2: Optical oositioning camera, used inside body
Switches: 1 x built in power button
LEDs: 4 x built in drone navigation LEDs
Power: 3.7v Lipo
Video Here Soon
Silent Hill Nurse – Gallery
