Simple Line Follower — Part 1 Mechanical Design

Below are completely free robot plans to build a simple line following robot.

It can be a daunting task of building your first robot and sometimes you’ll feel overwhelmed.  Well, howtomakearobot.us is here to help!  I designed this robot to be simple to build and easy to program.  I first started by designing the robot chassis in a solid modeling program.  If you want to do this step yourself, there are many great programs to check out:

Download Heeks CAD

Art of Illusion — 3D solid modeler
25 Free 3D solid Modeling programs

Here is the simple line follower robot chassis modeled in 3D:

As you can see, the robot chassis for this line follower is very simple.  It uses differential driving and a caster as a pivot point.  The bill of material is four purchased parts; wheels, motors, 4mm shaft collars and caster.  The remaining two parts, the base and the motor mounts were hand made.  Here’s a link to download the solid model free of charge:

Simple line following robot chassis 3D model — STEP format

Simple line following robot chassis 3D model — stereolithography (.STL) format

My brother and I built the prototype without these plans (I just had rough ideas in my head), but if you’d like to use the above design for your next robot base here are the detailed prints.  Just click on the below images for a full resolution version or click “save as” on the PDF links below the images.

Simple Line Follower Motor Mount Detailed Print (PDF) format

Simple Line Follower Motor Mount Detailed Print (PDF) format

One final thing missing on the mechanical design of this Simple Line Follower V1 robot is the bill of material, so here is the BOM: