Words cannot describe the joy on our faces when we walked into the back room to be greeted by a robot. It is the kind of start to the day every kid dreams about. Affordable robotics have been a hot topic of discussion for decades, since TV shows like 'Transformers' first opened our minds to the ideas of what they may be able to do. Over this period of time, toys have, to varying degrees, captured some of these ideas, utilising elements of talking, moving and environmental interaction. The Robosapien combines all of these and takes them to the next level.

The unit ships with a remote control, reminiscent of the Xbox game pad, and the face is absolutely littered with buttons. There are two thumb-sticks, two sets of four face buttons, as well as four shoulder buttons. All of this makes for quite a daunting experience out of the box.

Once you spend ten minutes with the manual however, it all begins to make sense, and the confusion just melts away in a blissful blend of witty robot one-liners and awestruck co-workers. This thing can pretty much do all those things you've dreamed about. It can walk at different paces, and can acquire a target (directed with a light from the top of the remote) to move towards. It even has optical sensors to determine when it is about to run into something and corrects its path accordingly.

I would love to program it with Bender's voice so it could walk around saying 'Kill all humans! I downloaded your video and loved it. It must be hard to make a robot that walks on two feet and sell it well. His battery pack is no longer functional and he's covered with the dust of many years of neglect, but.

That is not to say movement is perfect. The biggest annoyance we had was that the Robosapien cannot walk diagonally. To turn he must stop and rotate in a circle till he is facing the appropriate direction, then continue his march forwards. Being able to designate a direction and have him continue forwards at the same time would make movement much more fun. We also found him a little slow for the sort of pranks and general fun we were trying to have with him, so a small speed increase wouldn't go astray.

All four of its limbs, as well as its head and torso can all be manipulated using the second thumb-stick. This includes the ability to pick things up at two different heights and to throw them. The highlight of our time with the Robosapien was when a colleague placed a toy dog in front of it. Robosapien contemptuously picked up the poor creature, crushed its head and threw it away. We would have liked the optical sensors to extend to the limbs as picking things up is extremely difficult in general, and has more to do with the actual position of the robot in relation to the item than control of the hands. The ability to sense nearby objects on the floor and move the arms towards them would take this toy to the next level.

The Robosapien has other features that simply fall into the 'cool' category. He has a lot of preset moves, our favourite being the dance feature, in which he bops along to a variety of songs and even at one point does - you guessed it - The Robot. He also has the ability to pick himself up after a fall onto his back, which is definitely a sight worth seeing.

Even the recorded voice tracks are of a high quality. One would expect them to get annoying after a short period, but many of them are genuinely funny and we found they added to the experience. Sensible world of soccer keyboard controls.

One of the best things about the Robosapien is that it still manages to be an affordable package. We can see this being a big hit come Christmas time, as the sub $200 price really puts it within reach of most families. Just be sure not to let its optical sensors come in contact with any toy canines or you could have a bloodbath on your hands.

Hello fellow WowWee robotics hobbyists, I come to you, to let you know about the latest 'modification' I have done. I have modified RS Media personality, to be, Bender, from Futurama, if you dont remember him, maybe this picture will remind you.I have been working on this bender mod, for a few weeks, downloading/importing audio from season episodes of Futurama from and so far I have come up with 24 different sounds, and 7 bodycon's as well as 2 macro's of what bender does best;-) drink beer, and well party!Visit to check out the latest updates, and download'sVideos. Sunday, December 10, 2006.

Sharper Image is selling the Robosapien V2 for an absolutely absurdly low price in this one day sale. They are selling the Robosapien V2 for $89 USD while supplies last (USA residents only). These are apparently brand new units that you can get extended warranties on too, which is a good idea since it's such a complex product. I paid over $250 USD for mine which is the current list price, and the best I've seen on the street are the occasional but hard to find sales for $159 USD with the average price being $200 USD.

The sale is just for today but that is one hell of a price.Keywords. Many of you have written me and asked what is a great gift for the holidays? I'm biased of course, being the happy owner of a, I would recommend that as a gift especially since Amazon has them for only $159 (USD). But there is another robotics gift that I would like to highlight because it is terrific. The Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics kit is the successor to the best selling Mindstorms 1.0 and 2.0 kits. It's got a brand new processor, a host of new fun sensors and parts, and one of the best learning environments that anyone could ever want.

If you want to get a pre-assembled ready to play robot that only needs batteries, then get the Robosapien V2. On the other hand, if you feel you have an aspiring robot builder on your hands that wants to build lots of different kinds of robots without having to grab a power saw and a lathe, then get the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics kit.HOT NEWS: The Discovery Channel's online store has created a to save a nice fat $20 off your Lego Mindstorms NXT purchase. When you go to the the Discovery Store and order a kit, make sure you use the coupon code 99Robo to get your $20 discount. This is one of their top selling items and you don't want to get caught empty handed if it becomes hard to get like the Tickle Me Elmo TMX doll is now.Keywords:. The reports of the improvements to the Robosapien V2's vision system accuracy after adding a head mounted LED continue to roll in.For those of you that don't do major surgery on your, EvoSapien expert has created a robot friendly hack that does not require any invasive drilling or cutting. However, you do need to do some minor soldering and open the head; therefore technically you are voiding your warranty. But compared to hardcore alteration of the robot's body this is relatively mild.

Of course, you can still do serious damage if you short or solder the wrong wires or melt something in your robot.Use at your own risk and be aware that WowWee won't like it! Well its been a while since I wrote anything about the V2 so I thought what better way to start then to talk about possible interfacing with other robots and devices.roschler sparked some idea`s after a late night email trail, and the resault is a more complete picture of how I plan to work with the v2 and other robots.As you can see the idea in the diagram is to link the v2 to the main server which most likely will run a password protected vnc service.