The Spark That Ignited The Imagination

The Idea to build a robot has existed for a long time with us. Trhough out the years, we made many attempts to do so. Sometimes with succes, other times resulting into failure. In the past 10 years many creative ideas have passed our minds and soldering irons. But the idea to builed a big life size robot has always remaind.

The Actual spark to build one, ignited in August 2009 at Nemo Science Center in Amsterdam. We visited the Science center because they held a Robot fair there. When we walked arround all the different kinds of robot that where on display, we came to stop and think '' We Could Do That To '' And so Right there, on the spot, the sprak ignited our creativness, and we created a stable fundament for building G26T. But we soon encountered our first problem. We had no concrete ideas of how to actualy build it, or how to actualy do it.

Building G26T started several months after that fruitfull day at Nemo. But for our own excuus we neded to have a reason to build G26T. Dont ask us why, we just felt about it that way. But the excuse we neded came very soon with the charity shop in our home town. They wanted to create a Creativety Corner, and that was just the excuse we needed to participate.

From that moment, when the spark ignited in Nemo, several months before, grew out to be the basic concept for building G26T.

The Creative Concept

So the Idea to build a robot was created on August 2009. Our creative idea for building G26T was to use discarded 2nd hand material from the charity shop. In doing so we hoped to inspire other people, to think about our project. So they can see what can be done with a creative idea and lots of scrapped materials, to eventualy build something as interesting and yet a complex looking thing like G26T. And we are proud to say '' It Worked ''

Official Name and Inspirations

The official name of our project is G26T, but we tend to call it '' The G2 Project'' The Name G26T is similar to the droids that can be seen in the droid roon in a attraction called ''Startours'' at many Disneyland parks in the world. There you can see G29T, a droid that repairs other droids. And G24T, the operater of the droid room. G24T tends to say things in the droid room however, that you would probably not like to hear.

Anyway the aperence of G24T and G29T are the same. So we Build G26T to look kind of similar to them, but with our own twist added to it. That twist of apperence is based on what we have seen of robots throughout the years.

We are a big fan of the Startours arrtaction at Disneyland, and since Startours is based on the Starwars Movies of George Lucas, it does not come as a suprise we like Star Wars as well.

INtroduction and Opening


The Introduction of The G2 Project would take place on January 2010. However some problems we encountered during the build of our project, forced us to to postpone the introduction, until we almost finished our project.

Eventualy on Thursday February 25, 2010, G26T was introduced in the Charity shop. From that day on, we continued putting the finishing touches on G26T, on the spot, in the Charity shop, so people could actualy see us working on our Project.

Finishing the project happend on 27 February 2010, and on that day G26T was officialy introduced to the public by co builder '' Niels Exterkate '' a very good friend of mine. He did some very amazing work on the project.

What we used to build G26T

The material we used to build G26T, mostly came from the Charity shop itself. Below you can view the list of hardware we used to build G26T.

12 Printers
9 Scanners
6 Typewriters
1 Mp3 player
2 LCD Monitors
2 Computers
173 Led's
Lot of resistors
2 Led Scroltext Message Boards
2 Videocards
1 Pal Color Camera
+/- 3000 Meter cable
10 Meter Optical Licht Fiber
42 Kg Iron
1 Kg Aluminum
54 Gluerods
12 Meter solder
1 Copymachine
2 DVD Players
Lots of Diodes
Lots of Capacitors
quite a few voltage regulators
1 Scartcable
2 styrofoam plates
1 Hydrogen Peroxide Welding Machine
8 meter Shrinktube
Lots of Transistor
3 Printercables
12 PCB Scewterminals

1 Casette Deck
2 CD Players
50 cm PVC Pipe
24 Riffots
5 Panel meters
7 Power Supply's
1 Fire Extinguiser
2 tubes industrial Glue
5 meter pneumatic airhose PK6
3 PCB's 160 x 100mm
2 Amplifiers
4 Speakers
500 Cable Tay's
1 Cable Gutter
1 Hard Disk 40 Gb SATA
1 Processor Core 2 Duo
2048 Mb DDR2 533 Mhz Memory
2 DC Brushless Fans
Lots of Intergrated Circuits
Huge Amount if Nuts and Bolts
Hand Full of Swithes
3 meter Iron Rods
20 DC Motores
1 bottle thinner
3 Spaypaint Cans
1 Pneumatic Cylinder
A few Potentiometers
2 USB Cables
3 Reedrelays

Its the question, that people ask me on a daily basis.

'' Can G26T Walk? ''

Answer,

'' No He Can not Walk ''

So The Next Question comes,

''Why Not? ''


The Answer to the Question, ''Why can't G26T Walk? '' has 2 sides. The official answer is simpley because the robot was not build to walk, or move. It would have taken us to much time and money to actualy get G26T to move.

Besides, it is very difficult to make clear to a robot what 3 dimension are that are continuosly changing, and to tell it to stay balanced as well. It woulld quite simpely costs us to much money to build G26T like that.

The Unofficial Answer, from the perspective seen as an attraction, is the G26T has been badly damaged in a plasma strom, when he was abourd a starship, and in a case of emergence, had to make repairs, in order the save the ship. The story that we created for that, can be read below.

The G2 Project

The G2 Project is a creation made from different kinds of old and discarded electronic hardware, such as Printers, Scanners, Copiers, Electronic Typewriters, Computers and more. The Official name for this creation is, G26T, however the builders of this project call it '' The G2 Project ''  G26T is a Look-A-Like robot, inspired by the droid room in Startours, and Startours is one of the best known attractions in Disneyland Resort Paris. The owner of G26T is known for his enthusiasm for the G2 droids in Startours, and has tried several times to create a G2 droid. As you might have noticed, G26T is in a bad shape. Its computers are unable to restart, one of its claws has been ripped off, he is standing still and can't move an inch. This small introduction is the start of the story, behind G26T's life. The story of which goes like this:

G26T is in service of a starship, in a far away universe. On one of its voyages, the starship finds itself in the middle of a huge plasmastorm its shieldgenerators are not functioning and all of the 4  hyperdrive engines are failing. Without its shields the starship will be completely destroyed. The G2 droids aboard the starship, mostly 4, are meant to make repairs in case of emergencies. Because the starship is in de middle of this plasmastorm the G2 droids are commended to make repairs to the shieldgenerators, so that the ship won't be destroyed. The G2's are doing everything they can, as fast as possible. But the plasmastorm has such a magnitude of strength, that 3 of the 4 G2 droids lose their life. Even they are not capable of surviving a storm like this one. But G26T is one tough droid. In his battle to the storm, he almost gives his life, but he succeeds in repairing the shieldgenerators, and has even repaired one of the 4 hyperdrive engines. The starship leaves the storm as fast as possible. But G26T is very badly damaged, the plasmastorm has completely destroyed its primary and secondary computers, one of its claws has been ripped apart, and many optical nerves are severed. Only non critical systems are partially functional, and the only thing working properly, is its own self diagnostic service, that is only able to tell him that G26T needs repairs as soon as possible. G26T has become very grumpy after his ordeal with this storm, he does not like to be touched. If that does happen he yell's out loud '' stop touching me '' You would be grumpy to, if your computers where failing one of your claws is ripped off  right? Can you imagine how G26T feels? After the starship has escaped its fate of the plasmastorm, they dropped G26T on our planet, in order to have him repaired. But G26T has enough of the starship life. He does not want to work aboard a starship anymore, he has found a nice spot at Wawollie Kringloop, and likes to stay here, he just likes where he is right now.

Building G2 has taken a long time and many failures, like a welding machine that broke down, several electronics that failed to function, computers that seized up and where unrepaireble and many other kinds of things. The G2 Project  started on 1 October 2009, and was completed on 25 February 2010. Since then G26T can been seen as an attraction at Wawollie Kringloop, In the past period, the builders put over 500 hours of work into this project. The owner of The G2 Project was helped by a very special person, that made u huge contribution in building the G2 Project, such as the heavily modded MP3 player, that in combination with a self made Kinetic sensor is able to play the sound file '' Stop Touching Me '' but also for many other things.

The G2 Project:  Build by Lucien Westgeest and Niels Exterkate
Niels, thank you very much for your knowledge and help