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Robosapien

from: Character Options


This toy/machine is one of the best things I have ever had for my any of my birthdays, its absolutely fantastic and I was lucky enough to choose this one for myself with no regrets.
Everyone in the family thinks its fabulous too.
Its a must get toy/machine

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The Official Robosapien Hacker's Guide

by: Dave Prochnow

September 01, 2005
This toy/machine is one of the best things I have ever had for my any of my birthdays, its absolutely fantastic and I was lucky enough to choose this one for myself with no regrets.
Everyone in the family thinks its fabulous too.
Its a must get toy/machine

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Robosapien V2

from: Character Options

November 21, 2005
As I'm writing this I am looking at my V2 and thinking what a waste of money! When I first got it I was so excited and acting like a kid =) I thought it was so cool.
A week later I took it out of the box, spent 10 mins playing with it, threw away the packaging (which is massive!) and left it in the corner of my room. 1 month later I decide to have a quick play and disaster has struck!
Halfway through the initial self diagnostic it freezes and repeats "I think I have a bad motivator" and refuses to do anything else except repeat that statement! I checked the manual, there is no help section, I check the website there is no help section, I change the batteries and still no success.
I check online and to my horror discover ... Read More:

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Duracell Plus D x 6 Batteries

from: Duracell

September 01, 2005
As I'm writing this I am looking at my V2 and thinking what a waste of money! When I first got it I was so excited and acting like a kid =) I thought it was so cool.
A week later I took it out of the box, spent 10 mins playing with it, threw away the packaging (which is massive!) and left it in the corner of my room. 1 month later I decide to have a quick play and disaster has struck!
Halfway through the initial self diagnostic it freezes and repeats "I think I have a bad motivator" and refuses to do anything else except repeat that statement! I checked the manual, there is no help section, I check the website there is no help section, I change the batteries and still no success.
I check online and to my horror discover ... Read More:

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Duracell Plus AAA 8 pack

from: Duracell

September 01, 2005
A very good price for good old duracell batteries. Make sure you always have a spare pack in your drawer!

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Roboquad

from: Character Options

September 01, 2005
Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of fun and okay for the age ranges advertised. But it is isn't fast or zippy enough to appeal to younger kids (under 10s, I think).

At the moment, the price tag of £35 (down from £70 originally!) is spot on and makes this good value. It is programmable, but few are likely to experiment much with it, due to the clunky (ie. simple) interface on the controller. Most of the fun is to be had from the demos, direct manual control as well as the 'autonomous' mode; all via the basic and fairly robust controller.

The Roboquad itself does have limitations, even beyond some which I had forseen. It doesn't function optimally on soft surfaces (eg. carpet) and naturally will have similar problems with ... Read More:

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Robot Building for Dummies (For dummies)

by: Roger Arrick, Nancy Stevenson

October 17, 2003
Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of fun and okay for the age ranges advertised. But it is isn't fast or zippy enough to appeal to younger kids (under 10s, I think).

At the moment, the price tag of £35 (down from £70 originally!) is spot on and makes this good value. It is programmable, but few are likely to experiment much with it, due to the clunky (ie. simple) interface on the controller. Most of the fun is to be had from the demos, direct manual control as well as the 'autonomous' mode; all via the basic and fairly robust controller.

The Roboquad itself does have limitations, even beyond some which I had forseen. It doesn't function optimally on soft surfaces (eg. carpet) and naturally will have similar problems with ... Read More:

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FlyTech Dragonfly

from: Character Options

October 17, 2003
Loads of fun and if you stick with it you'll master it takes some skill tho..

Great price I think

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Robopet

from: Character Options

August 31, 2005
This is fun and cheap enough to risk with younger (but not infant) children.

Although most of this range of robot type toys have some level of programmability, the most fun is usually to be had letting them wander around in "auto" mode. In all cases, a clear uncluttered surface is very preferable. As is a non slippy one. Some exceptionally smooth tiles, for example, can confuse this sort of toy.

This was fun and the kids took longer than five minutes to get bored. However, if you have the time and money I would prefer Roboquad (please see my review thereof) over Robopet.

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Maximum Lego NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains (James Tiptree Award Anthology)

by: Brian Bagnall

May 22, 2007
I bought this book not long ago, and I've got through the first few chapters.
I can definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to do a little more with their NXT and build some more interesting robots. It's a great way to start playing around with some ideas if you're used to a certain amount of programming and find the graphical programming language that comes with the NXT just too restricting.

However there are a number of pretty weird mistakes with this book. References to things that aren't there (but presumably were in drafts), errors in the way you set up java and eclipse, and rather unclear diagrams. I have a certain amount of experience with java, so I was able to set things up fairly quickly. But I can imagine many people getting ... Read More: