At Emerald City Comic-Con the world’s first and only full-size, and functional Lego R2-D2 met its match when it came up against a full-size Dalek. The droid is about 16,000 bricks, 42″ tall, weighs 65 pounds, and can go 5 mph. It’s a radio-controlled, 4-wheeled masterpiece.
It’s powered by two Arduinos, with a dedicated motor, sound and RC receiver controllers. It’s programmed by Microsoft Surface Pro. It uses a 12VDC at 18Ah and a 9-channel airplane and 12-channel trigger type. It’s an impressive piece of kit, and moves super smoothly. I absolutely love this build.
The R2-D2 goes by the name L3-G0, it was built by Shawn and Lara Steele, Nikita Steele, Laurel Lee Steele and Hosik Lee: “The Steele’s are members of Sealug, the Seattle Lego User’s Group, the R2-D2 Builders Club, and the Pacific NW R2 Builders Club.”
…we went to Emerald City Comicon in 2013 and saw some of the wonderful Astromechs there. Of course I wanted to build one, but quickly realized it’d be a ton of effort, cost a lot, and I wasn’t terribly familiar with the materials. It should’ve been obvious, but “gee, I wanna build a droid” sat in one part of my brain while “I wonder what I’ll build next in Lego” sat in another part. Eventually we came to the obvious conclusion: “Let’s build an L3-G0″… Normally we grab a bunch of bricks and start building, then get more bricks, but for various reasons I started toying around with some of the sections in Lego Digital Designer to see if some of my ideas were practical. Of course, once I started, I forgot to stop.
Massive kudos to these guys. Job well done!
Read more about the L3-G0 the Lego R2-D2 here. I want one of these so badly!
