The Tomy i-SOBOT Robot is a fun, easy to setup robot which is 6.5 inches high, has advanced 17 degrees of freedom/servos, an in-built gyro-sensor for great balance, a speaker unit, a microphone with voice recognition chip and is fully controlled via an infrared remote control. The i-SOBOT is without doubt the most affordable humanoid robots on the market but with that comes a few limitations, however he has been recognised by Guinness Book of Records as the world’s smallest production biped robot.
i-SOBOT Video
Hardcore robot enthusiasts won’t be really be interested in this product as there isn’t any building required and you really can’t do much tinkering except for programme mode which allows you to store pre-recorded action strings. If you are interested in more advanced robotics you should be looking at either Kondo’s KHR or Hitec’s Robonova which are the types used in the likes of the Robo-One competition (but be prepared to pay at least 6 times the cost of the i-SOBOT).
Robosapien was one of the first affordable pre-assembled robots to hit the market and since then there have been more to follow but all of the current raft of affordable robots have lacked the human-like motion that you would see in the more professional kits – that is until now. The i-SOBOT is capable of much more life-like actions main due to his awesome 17 degrees of motions couple with a gyro-sensor to make sure he is super stable.
The robot is very easy to setup pop in the rechargable batteries (recharger supplied) and away you go. There are 4 modes to operate him even a voice activated mode which works great and from starting up he is extremely simple to operate and a lot of fun – his voice reminds me of Number 5 from the Short Circuit films.
All in all the i-SOBOT is the most affordable humanoid robot on the market offering a lot of fun and I think he will be popping up on a lot of Christmas lists this year.
i-SOBOT Images
