eBot forms a part of another workshop that me and my team conceptualized at Thinklabs, named eTRIx. The workshop focuses on building robots out of discrete electronic components without the use of any programmable entity.

The idea is to familiarize students with the practical aspects of designing and building electronic circuits and incorporating them in a robot. This approach proves very useful for students from non-electrical engineering background and newbies alike.

The Design
eBot was specially designed to allow users to rapidly prototype new control circuits on the robot itself. The robot comprises of differentially driven wheels, a pre-assembled motor driver board and a breadboard.

A wide range of circuits can be built on top of eBot which enables it to exhibit autonomous behaviors like photo-tropic, obstacle avoiding, line following, etc. There is ample of prototyping space which allows the user to add additional prefabricated sensor/circuits and build more sophisticated behaviors.

The Workshop
The eTRIx workshop covers topics from basic of electronics, bread boarding, and prototyping to Op Amps, IC 555 and Logic gates.

The workshop consists of several hands-on sessions. Experiments include: building light sensors, sound activated robot, obstacle avoiding robot, single sensor line following robot, etc.