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Engineers built a real walking Apex Legends loot robot
In a world where most games provide loot in some kind of hexagonal box, Apex Legends stands out with its quirky “trophies ticking” robot. The little pyramids of spider legs are nervous guys, they wriggle on the screen before exploding into loot, for good reason. Who likes to let his face collapse so that some bastards can get new stat trackers or pistol skins? YouTube anchor Graham Watson (aka 3D printing space) Constructed a real ticking sound of loot and captured its creepy action in his latest construction video, which you can watch above.
The above video is mainly about Watson’s eight-month process of designing, building and programming the trophy tick. Judging from his position on the kitchen counter, it is about 2.5 feet tall. Watson is a software engineer with a degree in mechanical engineering, but he says this is his first suitable robotics project.
The robot itself has everything you want. There are independent movable spider legs, allowing it to walk, kick or squat slowly. Then of course there is a pyramid-shaped head with three LED lights on each side to mimic the opening animation of the loot box. The ticking sound of loot can even tremble in “fear” like the in-game version before you open it.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Watson detailed how he turned the “extremely challenging” loot robot into reality.
“I want this thing to be as real as possible physically, but obviously the loot robot in the game has never been designed to exist in real life. It is just to look as cool as possible, and it does not actually consider the motor or servo system, Joints, electronic devices, gravity, physics, etc.,” Watson said.
Watson pointed out that the thin spider-like legs of the loot tick actually have no place to hide the servo motor, and the servo motor is necessary to move and make clear movements. Before finding a design that could support enough weight, he went through about 10 iterations of the legs. After that, he spent several months figuring out how to program the robot with the Raspberry Pi as the brain.
“The main focus at this time is to keep it as light as possible, while being strong enough not to break under a little force. However, I may have over-designed it instead of doing any type of FEA,” Watson said, referring to “finite element analysis,” which is a fancy engineering term used to test individual parts before building an entire prototype. “Or even any basic stress analysis, but it just withstood a lot of hits I didn’t expect.”
Watson said that the software he designed for the loot tick was ultimately more advanced than it needed to be, allowing it to change height and move it in different directions. However, once he puts everything in place, the weight of the robot will pull the servo motor to its limit.
The end result is a very accurate robot, which is mediocre in its smaller counterparts. It’s mainly just the ability to swing forward and twist the head of the pyramid, but it must be close enough to the robot in the game, and I almost want to open it myself. Watson does plan to make the V2 loot ticking sound, ideally using a 150-pound servo motor instead of the 14-pound motor he used, which should bring his original vision to life without the danger of shaking.
This is not the only neat Apex thing Watson does on his channel.Previous projects include Wingman Revolver and Working Reload Mechanic Pop the cylinder, top and bottom of the gun.Then there is a functioning mobile phone charger that looks like Octane’s springboard. He has a smaller version Can be used as a loot ticking sound for LED lights.