Don't Throw Away Your Old Phone — Build a Robot Instead

What happened

UCLA researchers built PhoneBot, a $400 open source humanoid (a robot built in roughly human shape) robot that operates with an old Android smartphone for processing and sensing. Your old phone might not be worth much on the secondhand market, but it could still have a future in robotics.

Even aging smartphones pack powerful processors, cameras, motion sensors, and wireless connectivity into a single device. Researchers at UCLA realized that these capabilities could replace much of the expensive electronics normally needed to build a robot.

Their solution is PhoneBot , an open source humanoid robot that operates with an ordinary Android smartphone as its brain. PhoneBot stands approximately 19 inches tall, weighs four pounds, and costs around $400 to build, excluding the smartphone.