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Hacking the RoboSapien

Posted by michael on from the t-1000 dept.

unassimilatible writes "The RoboSapien is a cool humanoid robot toy with pretty decent dexterity and 67 pre-programmed instructions. But the folks at The University of Freiberg have made the RoboSapien autonomous by installing a Pocket PC to its head. The Pocket PC is equipped with a camera and communicates via infrared to the robot, and the whole monstrosity can be programmed with Visual C++. The full API is available for download. I, for one, welcome..."

4 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Be careful with these suckers by mofochickamo · · Score: 5, Informative
    My boss got one of these about 3 months ago as a preview release from a friend who is a distributor. Some of the pre-programmed motions were quite funny (like the Neandertal roar for scaring small children). The robot also has good walking ability and dexterity in general.

    Though be warned, it isn't made out of the highest quality components. Much to the embaressment of my boss, the robot broke in his care. The head got stuck to one side. My boss and I considered opening it up and hacking it ourselves, but all we both had visions of giving the robot back to the distributor in many pieces.

    --
    Honk if you're horny.
  2. Freiburg not Freiberg by frostman · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case anyone's curious, the name of the town is Freiburg not Freiberg.

    But you probably figured that out from the URL, even if our noble editors did not.

    Nice town, by the way.

    --

    This Like That - fun with words!

  3. Robosapien in Servo Magazine by Psion · · Score: 5, Informative

    Servo Magazine had a feature last month on the Robosapien. Apparently, the designer felt very strongly about letting users hack the device, so he left plenty of space to add capabilities. The current issue of the magazine has a hacking contest for the toy. See Hack-a-Sapien contest.

  4. Mark Tilden by Smerity · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mark Tilden, the designer of Robosapien (and of BEAM robotics for any of you who have heard of it) purposely left the Robosapien open for modification (god bless his soul ^_^) More people/companies should do this! =)

    I'm actually quite interested in this, as I'm in the Australian Robocup Junior atm (Year 9) and this is a great platform to begin experimenting in bipedal robots. Heck, it could even begin it's own competition section (the robotic AIBO dogs have their own soccer competition)

    Mark Tilden is also heavy researcher in the biomorphic robotics field, and through his experiments he has essentially created the BEAM robotics field.

    If you haven't ever looked at BEAM robots, DO! They're can be amazingly simple (start here) and can then lead up to quite advanced and fun projects in robotics! And did I mention they're cheap =)

    Solarbotics, one of the best resources for BEAM robots I know of

    Robocup Official Website

    Mark Tilden at WIKI