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Robosapien

Robosapien is the latest in a recent string of robotic toys to hit the market. Robosapien is apparently designed by Mark Tilden (father of BEAM robotics) and has a large number of fun features and traits. Robosapien is bipedal (although with feet like his, he should be!), can pick up and throw objects, has six touch sensors, as well as a speaker and microphone for basic audio functionality. He also sports quite a cool design and paint scheme (see right).

Operation

Once you've unpacked Robosapien from his packaging (which must take at least 30 minutes), and supplied him with batteries (4 D-size for the robot, 3 AAA-size for the remote), operation couldn't be easier. Robosapien is controlled via a large IR remote control unit, containing 22 buttons each with three different modes. Thankfully, the IR receiver is mounted on the top of Robosapien's head, allowing for operation from virtually all angles.

There are a variety of ways of controlling Robosapien. You can put him in a demo mode that has him karate-chopping or dancing to music, program him to perform up to six moves on command or directly control him. Direct control allows you to move his limbs, waist, and motion completely—this gives you a large amount of control over what you can do: kicking a ball, waving his arms or chasing the cat (my favourite).

Head Hand Remote

The remote also features a few set routines, such as picking up an object, thumping, charging forward, and the all-important farting and burping noises. It is the programming mode though that children could have a lot of fun with. Robosapien has four programming modes: right sensor, left sensor, sonic and master program. The right and left sensors are triggered when sensors on their corresponding sides are triggered, the sonic sensor is triggered when the robot hears a sharp noise (and is in the Listen mode), and the master program is triggered from the remote control.

The right, left and sonic programs can store up to six commands and the master program up to 14 commands. This should be fairly sufficient for most children that want their robot to do something interesting. What I was disappointed about was that the sensor programs will not be triggered during the master program. For example, while the robot doesn't actually avoid obstacles itself, it would be easy to do using a left/right/master program combination if it allowed for sensor programs to preempt the master program.

One other issue I had with Robosapien was that although much of the functionality seemed geared at picking up or throwing objects, charging or hitting something, there was no way to control two Robosapiens in the same room. It seems that children could have a lot of fun (albeit slightly violently) with two Robosapiens, but the IR controllers had no method of distinguishing themselves. A "Player 1/2" toggle switch would have welcome.

Conclusion

All things considered, while Robosapien firmly remains as a toy, it is great to play around with. It features some superb functionality out-of-the-box that both entertains and educates: the demonstration dance routine will have you laughing out loud whilst the programming feature should help educate children with the help of a parent.

Update 21/08/2004: It is worth noting that Robosapien has generated a great deal of interest, especially within the hacker community, who have added a number of improvements, including cameras, additional processors and much more. If are interested in Robosapien as more than a toy, then Robosapien.tk is a good place to start.

8.5

Price: £79.99

Liked: Looks the part, nicely designed, some fun features.

Disliked: Programming functionality lacking, no "two-player" setting for the remote control.

Website: http://www.active-robots.com/

Submitted: 08/08/2004

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