This is my little man. He’s one of my favorite robots and one of the few things I bought on eBay that wasn’t a rip off. I paid $125 for him. He was brand new in a sealed box, which is probably the only reason it came from eBay yet worked.
This little fella can be operated by remote control or you can program it with the remote control keys, storing up to 60 movements. It also works with the Robodance program, getting its infra red signals through my USB-UIRT. But he has a whole lot of little demo routines that are kind of amazing. He will act out scenes from movies, talk to you, and he plays air guitar better than a hippy with a boom box and a bong.
My Tomy i-SOBOT
This robot does fall over, like most all do. Even Asimo, Sony’s two million dollar bipedal robot falls over. That’s why there are a couple of engineers who travel with it and their only job is to throw themselves under the expensive toy if it falls over. But my i-SOBOT is capable of standing himself back up, regardless of how he tips over. That’s pretty darn remarkable.
He spends a lot of his days sitting on my desk, occasionally being summoned to entertain me, which he always does.
The i-SOBOT owns the title of the world’s smallest fully articulated robot. He stands a whole 6 inches tall, has 17 servos giving him 17 degrees of movement. (That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s over twice the movement of any other robot. Even Sony’s over-bloated and overpriced $2mil Assimo isn’t as capable).
With its remote control, or directed with Robodance, the i-SOBOT is a very, very capable robot. He is fragile though, and wouldn’t take well to receiving the loving attentions of a 10 year old. One fall from a table and the chances are that i-SOBOT would be over and done with. To handle that sort of abuse takes a WowWee robot like the Robosapien.
But the i-SOBOT understands a few hundred different instructions, giving it an almost endless repetoire of movement combinations. It would be terribly difficult to get bored with its motion abilities.
The robot has the most built-in functions, known as “special actions” that it’s capable of. It can do imitations of movie scenes, sing and dance, and speak to you with a ton of phrases and sentences right out of the box. You needn’t be a robotics expert to use it and have the time of your life.