Wednesday, December 28, 2005
V2 The First 5 Hours
Robosapien v2 Review - by Sprocket2CogI've just spent the first afternoon with my new little (big?) buddy, the Robosapien V2. He's a lot heavier then I expected him to be, and I could see why he may suffer some motor failures or gear self desructions, but I'm guessing Mark Tilden has addressed this and other issues as well, and I really want to see the gear boxes. Even my 12 yr old son laughed loudly and mumbled something about hacking and wanting to see inside it.
But Mrs. Sprocket2cog says if we do that she`ll skin us alive and add some new functions! So we wait and talk about painting it some more.
Mine has suffered some heavy falls and still seems to be going ok, with the only real damage evident from the packing cables, not the falls. (These cables are many in number and you're mad if you try to get your v2 out of the box without some sort of knife, wire cutters or a small thermonuclear detonator, but be careful with the latter or your v2 may attempt to pinch it off you in an attempt to take over the world. Or perhaps control the Roboraptor (pass that restraining bolt!).
The biggest issue I`ve found is not the battery life, which albeit is a little short, understandably so. But rather the calibration of the camera and the audio levels needed to reach the sound sensors threshold . (In other words its slightly deaf and color blind)
The camera doesn't seem to operate well in ordinary incandesent lighting, with it failing to see skin tones at all, the red wasnt much better, the green worked sometimes and the blue we didnt try today, we didn't have a nice color blue he liked. We will do some outside testing in sunlight, and in neon lighing soon to see if that helps, but we want fresh batteries again to keep the test somewhat level.
But over all is he worth the money?
two answers here... yes and yes..
Show me another robot that exhibits the same or similar ranges of movement, sensors, speech synthesis or programmability without assistance from a PC for under $400 AUD. If you can, then I'll write a review about it and retract my statements about the Robosapen V2's status. But until, or until verison number 3 arrives, the circle of toy robots better look out because the V2 is set to take over the world, and he's got a whole heap of friends to help him......
If this family of robots, and its formidable cousin the Roboraptor or the Robopet come out in other guises then we can only imagine where we will be in 5-10 years time. We can only hope that the next ones are bigger and faster and can recharge themselves so there's less downtime.
It's obvious from my afternoons adventures that robots aren't dreaming anymore, they're giving us nightmares...
