KT-17’s Specs
* Birth Date: July 2022
* Drive System: Sabretooth 2*25 and scooter motors
* Body: Styrene frame and aluminium dome.
* Build: Fixed 3 legged R2
* Lighting: Joymonkey logics and Teecees PSIs
* Sound: Sparkfun MP3 player triggered by 15CH RF remote
* Special: Upgraded speakers after the initial smaller ones were too quiet at big events.
* Missions: Make-A-Wish charity events and Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 currently
R2-KT-17 was built by Oliver Steeples using parts and money donated by the UK R2D2 Builders Group. In June 2022 she was finished and started attending events on behalf of the R2 Builders Club to collect money for Make-A-Wish and make a difference to children worldwide. KT17 is made from styrene with scooter motors for drive with head rotation and sounds and took approximately 2 years to build. Her first event was a small convention to test drive the electronics, then COVID happened and nothing until July 2022 when she attended Wings and Wheels and met some Daleks, followed by M-Shed in Bristol meeting more droids of her own kind.
Celebration Europe 2023
Oliver’s Bio
“Whilst at university studying electro-mechanical engineering I got involved with Robot Wars in the UK and took part in the first three series. To build combat robots took both the practical and theory skills from my degree and also allowed me to pick up lots of hints and tips of robot building, while also learning about TV production.”
“After university I went into IT and missed robot building and came across the R2 Builders Group mailing list (shows how long ago it was) on the internet, and this was the sort of thing I could build given my previous robot building as well as my love of Star Wars. After seeing ANH and ESB on VHS I was hooked and the whole mythology of Star Wars and the lived in universe made it even better, other shows at the time such as Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica were good, but not Star Wars.”
“I started my R2-D2 build just after 2000 and attended Celebration 3 in Indianapolis in 2005 and met a lot of other R2 Builders and was great to meet all the people I had been speaking with online for the past 6 years which is one of the great things about the Star Wars community, meeting people you would never meet otherwise and making friends all around the world.”
“In 2007 I organised the R2 Builder at the first Star Wars Celebration in Europe and was great to meet a lot of European builders that I’d never met before. This was the first main outing for my R2-D2 and was the start of the R2 Builders Club in the UK. As the club grew more and more people had R2-D2s and it was a bit boring to see a sea of white and blue droids, to counter this I made a red styrene R5 based on the plans from Dave Everett who founded the Worldwide R2 Builders Group.”
“In 2013 I attended Star Wars Celebration in Essen, Germany and a special R4 droid (R4-CE2) was made by members of the German R2 Builders Group that was used on the main stage in several of the panels and as a helper for Warwick. I was lucky enough to meet Kathleen Kennedy and get a photo backstage with her, I also made a very cheeky comment about if they needed droids for the new Star Wars film then to get in touch.”
“I wasn’t to know that 3 months later I’d be starting work at Pinewood building new R2-D2s for the new Star Wars saga.”
“During filming we heard from Lucasfilm that KT was wanted in the film somewhere and originally she was meant to be in the basement of Maz’s castle and would pass Rey just before she found the lightsabre; however this was changed so she was at the Rebel Base which was filmed right at the end of production.”
“Amongst the UK R2 Builders we had spoken about building a charity droid for a few years, however as anyone knows this is a huge amount of time and effort so the plan kept being delayed. Whilst filming TFA we had various workshop tours by people and groups, but one of the best and most magical was a tour by Make-A-Wish where the children got to plan with original lightsabres and blasters, while also seeing the creature show including various aliens, costumes and everyone’s favourite droid R2-D2. It was amazing to see their smiles and happiness, whilst knowing the future was very bleak for all of them.”
“I had been donating money to Make-A-Wish from various paid promotional R2 events for a while, and after TFA and KT being used we decided we could build KT as a group. We asked people to donate parts or money, which is great as the whole droid building community came together (not just the UK but around the world) and after a while I had a huge pile of parts in various degrees of finished state.”
“After several years of building and COVID KT-17 is starting to do events and will shortly be collecting money for Make-A-Wish, hopefully she can bring smiles and happiness to children that are going through tough times and be a beacon of happiness to others around her.”
