A new Omnibot for the 21st Century
When I was a young whippersnapper, in-between cleaning chimneys and begging for scraps of festering meat and stale bread on street corners (there was food at home, I just enjoyed the human interaction), I used to lust wantonly for Tomy's Omnibot 2000. They had a few on the top shelf of our local toyshop, and I would beg my parents to buy me one. Sensibly, however, they refrained – it was expensive and, looking back, not very good (I'm being polite in deference to the warm childhood memories). However, I'm expecting them to retroactively throw open their chequebook and buy me what Tomy have brought out now.
This, friends and soft-skinned varmints, is the Omnibot2007 i-SOBOT. Standing just 165mm tall and weighing in at a mere 350g, Tomy are heralding him the world's smallest biped robot; whether that's true or not I don't really care – what's important is the price. $312 gets you the basic model, $418 adds in a colour video camera which can stream footage over WiFi; available in July and October respectively, they vigorously undercut rivals and make having a home-entertainment robot a real possibility for a far greater number of people.
Check out more details and photos after the cut, as well as video of the little guy in action!
Capable of responding to two remote controls simultaneously, the i-SOBOT also has voice recognition for up to 10 vocal commands, can dance in time to music as well as string together macro performances of 20 different moves. His sweet little head swivels sixty degrees (if you've got the camera-toting version) and the remote has a handy LCD screen for programming.
Based on the sales success of the i-SOBOT, Tomy are aiming to bring out a developing range of the little buggers. No "robot overlord" jokes, please.
Videos (all .wmv files; right-click & 'save as' to download):
