3d printed replacement “ball” for the Loona petbot

A silly project to make a durable, fetchable, recognizable ball to replace Lorna’s stock, cardboard cutout ball

Loona the Petbot comes with a couple of toys. One, is a durable cloth with a special screen printed symbol that is used to play a “bull fight” game with Loona. The other is a very light cardboard, d12 looking “ball” (technically a dodecahedron, or 12-sided shape) that you punch out of a perforated page, then fold, and finally insert various “tabs” into appropriate “slots” in order to get an object that Loona can recognize from a few meters away.

Stay away from inappropriate slots, kids. Anyway, when done properly-ish, it looks like this:

I haven’t tried the bull fight game with Loona yet. I went for the craft project slash game of ball. Loona is pretty darn adorable playing it too. But this little cardboard cutout is not going to last. And right now, Loona can’t recognize any other type of ball.

If the ball gets destroyed, Loona forgets how to play ball… forever.

The combination of heads and ear animations, eye animations, and sounds make Loona incredibly expressive

More words… about the first attempt

This should summarize how it went. Maybe a little video clip?

And now some words about the second attempt, and a picture.

A bit about how attempt #2 went goes here.

And then attempt #3, how it looked and how it went.

And then I realized that the 3d depth of the symbol was likely the issue… new plan…

Some words about how it was tested, maybe what comes next. Maybe a video clip of Loona playing?

Loona the petbot playing with her new, much more durable "ball"

Wrap up.


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