Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Robosapien


RoboSapien is a toy-like biomorphic robot designed by Mark Tilden and produced by Wow Wee toys. The RoboSapien is preprogrammed with moves, and also can be controlled by an infrared remote control included with the toy, or by either a personal computer equipped with an infrared transmitter, and an infrared transmitter-equipped PDA. RoboSapien, as the advert for it says, is "The robot that thinks it's a human!".

The toy is capable of a walking motion without recourse to wheels within its feet. It is also able to grasp objects with either of its hands, and is also able to throw grasped objects with mild force. It has a small loudspeaker unit, which can broadcast several different vocalizations, all of which appear to be recordings of a human male pretending to be a great ape, such as a gorilla. Or it can fart or belch very loudly.

The toy's remote control unit has a total of 21 different buttons. With the help of two shift buttons, a total of 67 different robot-executable commands are accessible.