ZigBee all-in-one chip gets outing in creepy robot

If your idea of a playful robot companion is one of those tinted security camera globes on some freaky spider-like legs, then Radiopulse’s showcase RoboBlock might be the oddball for you.  The six-legged gold beastie has been outfitted with a ZigBee wireless chip, allowing for remote control via a modified PlayStation controller.

Specifically, it uses the MANGO MG2400 transmitter/receiver pair, which manages to fit not only the transceiver but a high-speed 8-bit microcontroller, AES-128 encryption engine, 1.5V regulator and more all on one die.  Equally impressive is the scalable 250kbps to 1Mbps data transfer rate.

While this may seem all well and good for a remote controlled robot, I can understand you perhaps thinking “how does this affect me?”  Well, my self-obsessed little munchkin, it heralds a new generation of compact, low-power wireless devices that intercommunicate securely and can be used for a variety of embedded and modular functions.  Think adaptive security systems that scale instantly as you need them to, or interconnected mobile devices that form mesh networks.

The MANGO developers kit is available now from Radiopulse.

Radiopulse [via AVING]