Meet Vincenzo D’Andrea: The man who has taught himself to build over 30 robots
BEATRICE, Neb. - If you live in the Beatrice area, you may have seen Vinny D’Andrea riding around town on one of his motorcycles, or working the bar at the Eagles Club, but Vinny has a unique hidden hobby - one that takes time, patience, and trial and error.
On the second floor of his midtown Beatrice home, D’Andrea has what he calls his “lab”, a room where he’s built over 30 robots in five years.
“I just build them for fun… It’s kind of like an art project.”
Vinny is self taught and builds all of his robots out of things he’s found, be it pieces of old technology, or the metal from a razor scooter. He’s built everything from a death ray with a real laser to robots that can respond to certain senses.
When getting started, he began to search for pieces at Radio Shack stores when they all closed down. But Vinny says his passion for the hobby began long ago.
“As a kid I was always fascinated by taking things apart and building new things,” D’Andrea said. “I’ve always had piles of junk that I build things out of. I found an open source system that allows me to actually move and take objects and control them with program.”
But the hobby isn’t easy. It comes with its fair share of challenges, and continued repairs come with each project D’Andrea takes on. D’Andrea says what keeps him invested is proving to himself he can overcome the challenges building a robot presents.
“Just the curiosity to see if I can make things happen… Even if something stops working, I’ll just use the parts to cannibalize it and begin to build something else.”
With such a unique skill set, you might think D’Andrea would try to turn his passion into a career, but for the love of doing it for fun, that’s no his plan.
“I kept it as a hobby because once you start getting paid for a hobby, it stops being fun and something you want to do and you lose your passion for it,” D’Andrea said. “This way, just doing it for fun, it’s been my passion and I’ve enjoyed it for years.”