Time to read: 5 min
星球大战银河系周围的爱好者被2015年的新的球形机器人BB-8™的首次亮相力量唤醒了and subsequently rushed to purchase their own little droids, made by Boulder-basedSphero.。现在，粉丝急切地捕捉新的BB-9E Droid和心爱的经典R2-D2。
我们与Sphero的工程师一起努力，周五迈出仔细观察BB-9E.andR2-D2在两个独家拆除中。在拆除之后，我们与三个Sphero的工程师讨论了他们与迪士尼合作的经历开发BB-8，BB-9E和R2-D2。
In this exclusive interview, Senior Electrical EngineerRichard Rhodesand Senior Mechanical Engineers犹太教训练andGus Aramayo与我们分享他们的思想，了解它的迪斯尼产品的产品，他们在开发地球居民的Droids时，他们的灵感以及他们的工程过程。
Replicating a Disney Character Without CAD
Like many Star Wars fans, Lucasfilm has exacting criteria for character development—the physical product必须stay true to the original artwork. For the development of the new BB-9E toy, Disney shared a variety of images and movie props with the Sphero team, but not CAD files, so Sphero’s engineers were tasked with the incredibly challenging problem of constructing the new product’s shape and dimensions from scratch.
“BB-9E’s head is a trapezoid shape, and for the first few prototypes, the shape was off by about ten degrees and looked a bit odd… we spent a lot of time iterating on the shape to make sure it was true to the original design,” shares Judd.
那么球队如何知道他们何时袭击标记？利用Lucasfilm批准了很多。
“We would send them our design iterations and each time they might say, ‘This color’s a little off,’ or “This line needs to move this way,” adds Judd. “On BB-9E’s face, blue lights were measured down to a tenth of a millimeter, and we fought to get it as close to perfect as we could. When you scale down, a lot of the details get really tiny and you need to consider if you can even manufacture a 0.05 mm difference easily.”
Developing a New Inductive Charging Technology
The biggest innovation in the new BB-9E Sphero droid over the original BB-8, is the introduction of inductive charging technology for the lights in the head.
Richard, who led the development of this technology, explains his inspiration to place inductive coils in BB-9E’s head:
“When I first began working at Sphero, we were exploring a different iteration of BB-8 with an in-house inductive charging solution. That project never came to fruition, but I had done all this research on a unique inductive charger,” Richard recounts. When Sphero began to work on BB-9E, it was a great opportunity to revisit this proprietary inductive charging solution. “I started playing around with it, and I had always wanted to make his eye an LED since it looks like one, so I thought I could put power in his head.”
Being a team full of creative and ambitious engineers, initial ideas for BB-9E’s technology included infrared, obstacle avoidance, and speakers in the head.
“Those didn’t work out since we were working against the immovable Force Friday deadline,” Richard notes, “but the lights did, since it’s a very lightweight and low-cost solution, and I proved it could be electrically efficient enough.”
In a Sea of R2 Replicas, Sphero Aimed to Create the Best
After selling over a million BB-8s, Sphero turned their attention to R2-D2, a cross-generational droid who appeals to today’s kids and their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. After researching other R2-D2s on the market, the Sphero team pitched Disney on allowing them to build a new R2-D2 toy, which would be in relative scale to Sphero’s BB-8. When Disney gave them the OK, the project kicked off in late 2016, to get it to market by Force Friday.
After conducting extensive research on how to build an R2 character in a small form factor, they3D printeda rough prototype.
“我们将它直接印在蓝色上FDM打印机, so we essentially had a blue can driving around the office,” laughs Judd. “We tried to stay really true to all the details—the power coupler, the grill, the power ‘hoses’ on his feet—we packed a ton of hardware into R2-D2.”
“我们想要一个真正良好的R2，在真实地设计的情况下，有了所有的细节，”贾迪德补充道。
作为公司的第一个双足robot, R2 presented specific development challenges.
“It came down to the bipod-to-tripod transformation and the waddling,” notes Gus, who led mechanical development for R2-D2. “One of the biggest challenges was the mid-leg deployment—we learned people wanted to see it come all the way down, like in the movies.”
为了帮助他们的发展，他们咨询了一个专家R2-D2 Builders Club探索他们如何确保R2的脚不会被粘在地毯上，以及收集者希望在这个新产品中看到什么。然后，工程师检查了脚踝关节并得出结论，如果他们可以隔离那种运动，他们就可以在机器人中实际地锻炼蹒跚运动。
Controlling four different degrees of movement could involve a lot of motors, but they were able to make it happen with just one.
“It all runs off of one motor connected to individual CAMS,” explains Gus. “On one end, we are in tripod mode, and each of those CAMs goes through his different positions. It was quite the challenge, with just one motor.”
The engineers needed to get a small motor into the robot’s foot that was powerful enough to drive him along the ground, and they also needed to find real estate for a small motor and a gearbox. The ankle box on each foot actually has gears on it, then runs back out to the belt drive, using every available millimeter.
“我们有一个伴侣我们与源头来源的高电机，所以我们在框架尺寸上与它们合作，确切地衍生出了给定速度的扭矩，然后我们为此进行了定制绕组这种速度的电机，“贾德解释道。“我们使用具有普通包装尺寸的公共电机，但将它们调谐到我们的确切参数并用自定义绕组进行优化。”
没有限制的探索
当涉及创造玩具的生活特征时，Sphero Mindset就是在没有约束的情况下启动探索过程。
“当一个荒谬的挑战是构成,没有人here go, ‘That’s not going to happen,’” says Richard. “Our default position is, ‘how can we do that?’ We start collaborating on ridiculous ideas, and then we sometimes find out they’re not as ridiculous as we thought! That’s the magic of our team and the beautiful thing about working here.”
So what’s next for Sphero?
“我们真的很喜欢在角色上工作，并希望制作令人难忘和品格的产品，”Judd说。“我们制作的下一件事将继续接受我们在如何围绕如何制作一个有趣和可爱的人物的知识。”
查看Sphero的商店，让他们的手在新鲜BB-9E.andR2-D2toys. For more exclusive interviews with the engineers behind the best hardware teams, be sure to subscribe below!
