Robonova RTW robot review... Amazing!

Lynxmotion Legged Robots
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Hello everyone,

I received a Robonova RTW for our production of the website stuff quite a while ago. It sat there as I was not looking forward to taking on a project like this with so many other things going on. I just new I had to wait till I could devote my full attention to it. I figured it would require installing software, and programming, end trial and error, etc.

A friend of mine stopped by the shop a couple weeks ago and asked what’s new? I showed him some things we were working on and he noticed the little guy sitting on the work bench. He turned it on, and to my astonishment, it moved very slowly into a home position, standing upright. Hmmm, we though. What is this remote control for. I found some “AAA” batteries and stuck them into the TV style remote control and pressed the up arrow button while pointing it at the robots head. It took 3 forward steps… Whatha… I started pressing the buttons and it simply amazed us. When it says ready to walk (RTW) they aren’t kidding.

Now the early version I received had a Japanese manual, so I didn’t get much from that. But after some trial and error, such as don’t press the P1 or P2 buttons, becuse the robot will slam to the floor, I was able to make the robot do lots of cool walks and poses. I later realised the P1 and P2 buttons make the robot get up from laying on it’s front or back. Doh!

I hope to throw some video up to illustrate this little guys amazing versitility. I was impressed. :smiley:

Note, the Kit version does not include the remote control accessory. I have all of the accessories on order, but they are not shipping them yet.

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the Kit version does not include the remote control accessory

I just received my kit version and it does have the Remote Control and IR detector (what they call the Romocon IR Set). I noticed that HiTec’s Web site says the kit version doesn’t come with the Romocon, but it is clearly written on the box (the UPC label) that it does.

I’m getting ready to put mine together now. What a trip this is going to be!

Kenny

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It is pretty amazing. I’ve played with Robonova-1s here in Japan a few times at exhibitions, and their performance is much smoother and more impressive than the earlier Robo-One robots.

Matt Bauer recently put one of the kits together and created a neat video showing what it can do - including some surprising karate/kung fu moves. He shared all his build experiences, and the video on our Robots Dreams weblog and is putting his own site up soon.