It is now Two Years since I started my Totally-Not-Evil-Robot-Army!
For this blog, I have had over 14,500+ visits. Hopefully, this is a sign of more Makers becoming interested in the building robots.
However, I am savvy enough to understand that many (possibly evil - Internet software Robots) have driven some of my numbers. Web-Crawlers and Search Engines regularly pass through the Blogger collecting information, pictures etc. I have been directly crawled from an Israeli base search engine responsible for at least 3k hits in the last year, by my estimates. Also, this humble blog had been the target of some Ukrainian SEO- Search Engine Optimization hackers, trying to make comments that cross link URLs and drive up results for their customers. I have removed their posts, but I believe I am still in *their* logs, which results in a lot of other victims in their bot army cross-linking to my site. Thus, I have a lot of referrals from random non-robot, non-educational sites. <sigh> unfortunately this is part of our modern Internet. And, it also make the Ukraine the most popular country amongst our visitors.
The Covid-Crisis has also brought in a number of visitors. Perhaps people are building robots while in lockdown? some of the most popular locations have been from Hong Kong - perhaps a future robot hot-spot?
The year in passing
Well, I did take a bit of a sabbatical for a few months. I had a lot of personal work in relocating to a new home, and even more effort in starting a new software business. I am still thoroughly enjoying robot building and will continue to post my adventures in robotics in a public journal. There are many many robots to be built. As we all know, the robots can't build themselves... until they can. ;)
This years robots include a new design for a Robotic Dog - Mojo3. In addition (as a distraction?) I worked on a Millipede based robot call Milli (original, eh?). Both of these robots are still in active design stages. Mojo3 is going through walking tests. For the Millipede, I am exploring better ways to drive the robot using recycled printer motors.
Let keep building!