- Robert Zollna has used his experience as a Navy engineer in a way that amazes others
- Zollna recently completed his third robot build
- Zollna tells PEOPLE that this fun hobby helps him share his love for his beloved characters with others while using skills he doesn’t normally use
Robert Zollna has always had a passion for putting things together.
Zollna, the robotics engineer behind @ziggy_nonskid on TikTok, tells PEOPLE that his builds started as a fun hobby to keep skills he doesn’t always use sharp.
“I studied mechanical engineering in college and later became a machinist while in the Navy, but life after the Navy saw me in a career that had nothing to do with mechanical engineering. So I started working on my own, mostly vehicles and model airplanes. Then I got pretty deep into 3D printing,” he tells PEOPLE.
WALL-E, the first robot he documented on TikTok, started as a birthday present for his grandson.
“My son said he really liked the movie WALL-E and he wanted his own WALL-E robot,” he says. “I started building him a quarter-sized fully articulated wall-e robot and posting the progress on TikTok. When it was completed, the birthday video went viral because I let the robot out of the box as a surprise gift.”
He went even further from there, building the same but at “three-quarters the size with a lot more functionality that I can take to comics and other events and for my own enjoyment.”
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It took an engineer 7 months to create a larger version of WALL-E. After that, he built Mo, “a natural evolution of the creature from the same movie”.
At first he thought of building it from scratch when one day he had an “aha moment” at home.
“I watched my robot vacuum hopping around the room and realized it already had all the autonomy it needed built in, so I basically tore apart a perfectly functional robot vacuum,” he says with a laugh. “After two months of construction, the Mo robot is complete. Fittingly, Mo, since he’s the cleaning bot in the movie and is based on a robot vacuum cleaner platform, I didn’t lose.”
That connection led Zollna to his latest project — a working replica of Rosie the robot from the cult animated series, The Jetsons.
“Maybe I’m giving away my age, but I grew up watching The Jetsonsand after Mo, I was looking at my new replacement robot vacuum and thought how great it would be to have a Rosie that actually does the housework, and that was the spark of the Rosie build,” she shares.
This time he managed to do it without “destroying” his new robot vacuum cleaner.
“I left the vacuum intact, but made a handle attachment so the vacuum can pull the Rosie robot while cleaning. After about 4 months, I had it mostly finished.”
Rosie presented Zollna with unique challenges and led him to “think deeply about how to solve some difficult engineering problems, like how to launch and operate an office chair base, and I absolutely love everything about it,” he says.
Zollna also enjoyed finding ways to reuse parts from different projects in bringing Rosie to life, which allowed him to “use things that had another purpose and that would probably have been thrown away as trash and incorporate them into his own creation.”
“Rosie has the most repurposed parts of any of my other robots. The speakers and body cover are from an old flat screen TV. The audio amplifier is from an old transistor radio. The drive wheel motors are from an automatic vehicle tailgate opener and the bottom is from an old construction insulating foam.”
What has also brought Zolln a lot of joy is sharing the process on TikTok, where he’s built a community that provides “tons of supportive ideas, suggestions, tips, and even where to find the hard parts.”
“Of course there’s negativity from time to time, but to be a creator on TikTok you have to have a thick skin and let things roll off your back,” he admits. “I’ve also made great friends on TikTok and even met quite a few creators and TikTokers in real life. They’ve been very supportive of what I’m doing and keep me energized to keep posting videos.”
Although he doesn’t consider himself a “professional maker,” Zollna enjoys “sharing my passions and building and creating new things.”
Zollna also uses the robots to give back, taking them to “events in the Pacific Northwest, starting with the Northwest Comicon Circuit.”
“I work with the Navy MWR to help entertain sailors and their families who are often away from home, especially during the holidays, as well as patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital,” he says. “I am currently applying for a ‘loft’ STEM program on Bainbridge Island to teach students the basics of robotics.”
He’s excited to debut Rosie this year, saying: “Judging by the reaction on TikTok, I’m sure it’s going to be a hit.”
As for what’s next, Zollna says, “I usually build from fall to early winter, often against the deadline for Emerald City Comicon. The next robot I build will be K9 from Dr. Who or scutter ‘Bob’ from Red dwarf.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education