PenBot Mini is a credit-card-sized drawing robot that moves a pen using linked arms. Creator Dorian Todd originally began the project with the goal of building a robot to sign a senior yearbook. Along the way, a toaster-sized version drew more than 50 vector portraits of visitors at a 2025 event.
Shrinking the mechanism made even tiny motor inaccuracies visible on paper, so Todd added miniature bearings to its joints and software that calculates and corrects the pen's position.
It started with signing a yearbook, detoured through a portrait-drawing robot, and ended up as a pocket-sized precision machine. That's a long route to a signature.
Maker Tucker Osman built a working Mactini, a miniature computer originally imagined in a parody of Apple's shrinking products. Its only input is a touch-sensitive pad made with conductive 3D-printing filament. Different press lengths and pauses are recognized as patterns that become letters, punctuation, or commands. The device has a small color screen, salvaged speakers, and software that can play music and video as well as accept text.
A parody of removing too many buttons has become a real computer. Typing on it sounds like performing a tiny percussion solo.
RayTriangle built a game console inside a tiny television antenna plug, including its battery. An ESP32-S3 generates the video and audio signals for an older PAL television and runs DOOM.
Two small circuit boards sit on either side of the battery and connect through a flexible cable. The system creates an analog television carrier signal, while a Bluetooth game controller handles input.
The game console has shrunk until it is effectively the antenna plug behind the television. DOOM is on the screen, but the console is almost invisible.
Daniel Simu, creator of the full-size acrobatic robot Acrobot, has built a miniature version called Micro Acrobot. The desk toy combines MakerBeamXS aluminum profiles, 3D-printed parts and an acrylic panel, and is offered as a DIY kit.
It has the same number of joints and the same hands and feet as its larger counterpart, so it can be posed for similar tricks, including handstands. Unlike the large robot, the miniature has no motors and must be posed by hand.
Shrink an acrobatic robot into a toy and it can no longer perform by itself. Now the human has to do the work of making the robot strike a pose.
Issen Boy is a 1.1 cm-square handheld game console built around the world of Issun-boshi, combining light, Japanese-inspired design, and electronics. The tiny circuit board implements the functions of an actual game console, including an input method that makes it genuinely playable.
The project was created by Yugi Tech Lab and won the grand prize in DigiKey Make ONE Challenge 2026. Its ProtoPedia page also lists the team's roles, including overall software, hardware, planning, and implementation by Yugi Tech Lab, AI work by KIRA_YTL, and 3D CAD work by mackey_YTL.
While other game hardware competes on screen size, this one won by shrinking the entire console to 1.1 cm. Your eyes and fingertips become part of the challenge.
It started with signing a yearbook, detoured through a portrait-drawing robot, and ended up as a pocket-sized precision machine. That's a long route to a signature.