I play with different educational manipulatives for a living. (Visit www.weirdrichard.com). My children are spoiled with access to all sorts of toys!

I told my son (age 5) about the Instuctables/Autodesk Kinetic Sculpture Contest. "You just have to build something that moves!" With some excitement, he ran to his LEGO station and created. A short time later, he strutted over and proudly presented his robot! He demonstrated that it moves by sliding it along the floor, pushing over a variety of minifigs.

Not bad for a 5 year old.

I have to admit that I enjoyed playing with this model, especially in tackling those pesky rock monsters.

This instructable will describe how to create the human-powered "August's Robot".

Note: The CAD images were generated in LDraw/MLCAD. The avi file was captured from LDView. The nice rendered images were created with L3PAO and POV-RAY. Additional
editing performed in GIMP.

LDraw software available at www.ldraw.org
POV-RAY available at www.povray.org
GIMP available at www.gimp.org/downloads/

Step 1: Gather Elements!

You will need to gather your parts. These components are available from BrickLink (www.bricklink.com - my preference), and often come up at Craig's List or ebay. I also haunt yard sales! (This robot was created entirely out of parts purchased at a yard sale!) Elements can always be purchased from LEGO or one of their retailers.

The List:

2 Brick 2 x 3s
1 Brick 2 x 4 with Pins
1 Brick 2 x 6
1 Brick 1 x 2
1 Plate 1 x 4
2 Plate 2 x 4s
1 Plate 2 x 10
1 Plate 4 x 4
1 Plate 6 x 8
2 Tires (Medium)
2 Wheel (Freestyle Type)

Step 2: Construct Rear Wheels

Put the tires on the wheels, and push the wheels onto the 2x4 brick with pins.

Step 3: Construct Front Sliding Ski

Stack (from bottom up) the 6x8 plate, 2x4 plate, 4x4 plate, and the 1x2 brick. This assembly acts as a ski, so I am calling it the "Front Sliding Ski".