Jamie Hyneman: For the most part, I am using standard RC products that any kid can get from a hobby shop. I got started with this stuff a few years ago by, among other things, checking out magazines—and yours was one of them—to become familiar with available products.

Jamie uses a reconfigured Futaba 9ZAP transmitter to allow several people to control robotic movement.

JH: My first serious involvement was with a robot I built for Robot Wars named Blendo. Blendo and I became notorious. Blendo was the first really destructive robot to hit the new sport, as it was the first of the ‘spinners,’ robots that spun up a flywheel and harnessed that energy when delivering a blow. My current success as a host in the Discovery Channel series MythBusters is somewhat thanks to Blendo and RC, as the robot was the bad boy of the competition at the time I was interviewed by a documentary film maker by the name of Peter Rees, who remembered me years later when he had the idea to do MythBusters.
My first job that used much in the way of RC was Disney’s Flubber with Robin Williams. Before that, I had operated some of the usual RC stuff, like cars and tanks for fun, but in Flubber, I got fairly involved and made one of the yellow ‘Weebo’ robots that was RC. I had also done a few custom projects for fun. I made what I called an RC tractor: it was a basic steel framed box with two power wheels and a swivel wheel, a car battery, two wheelchair motors, and two speed controls. I mounted a sweeper on the front of it and cleaned the shop with it, and later I mounted a mannequin on it and rented it out to serve drinks at a party. (I got to sit at the bar and have drinks on the house while driving the dummy around hustling hors d’oeuvres and martinis. I had fun messing with the guests. They would start to reach for something and before they took it, I’d back up out of reach. Then when they tried again, I’d lunge at them...this got worse as the evening wore on.) At any rate, it was like a piece of farm equipment that you could hook a plow or a wagon or a mower onto—in this case, it was smaller and for inside.
 
RCD: Were you ever involved with RC as a hobby—cars, boats, aircraft?

JH: No. When I was a kid, the technology was very limited. Now we have servos and receivers the size of a dime, and mosfets and such for proportional speed control. Pulse code modulation. Failsafes. There are a lot of things out there now that allow me to do things that simply could not have been done before.
 
RCD: Do your designs generally adapt existing technology, or are they primarily creations from the ground up?

JH:: Both. I always use things that pre-exist if they fill the bill for something I need to make. Sometimes I will radically adapt an off-the-shelf item. I once made a linear servo the size of an AA battery by taking the feedback electronics out of a little rotary servo, using a linear potentiometer out of a boom box equalizer...there is a lot of stuff in those little chips that would be difficult to do from scratch. I also use a lot of cordless drills for the basic power source because they are, as a rule, intended to be tough, light, very torquey, frugal on power...all the things you need in self-propelled self-contained items.

In a number of cases, I have had to custom make my own servos because there isn’t anything on the market that is strong enough for the size. To give the engineers in the industry the respect they deserve, a lot of the conventional products like motors and servos and such are intended to have a long service life; where for the most part I can get away with having something work a few times before it falls apart. And in fact this is often my goal because if I get the job done and then the device is worn-out or broken, that means I’ve built exactly what was needed and didn’t waste time on overbuilding. Of course, this is a risky game to play because with commercials and such there can be a lot of money at stake, so if I cut it too close, I’m in trouble. 

This Impala from a MythBusters experiment is one of the largest RC cars that we’ve ever seen. The classic Chevy featured a little extra motivation courtesy of the rooftop rocket power. Jamie controlled the car from his perch in a helicopter flying from behind. Images courtesy the Discovery Channel

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