ROBOTS DREAMS

WowWee Spyball Looks Very Promising (Video)

We’re probably the #1 fan of the WowWee Rovio mobile videocam robot, so you can easily imagine how we can hardly wait to get it’s younger brother ? the Spyball robot that WowWee unveiled at CES 2009 about a week ago. While the Spyball is smaller, and cheaper, than Rovio, it should open up some new, exciting videocam applications.

Robot Sightings: Homeless Robot, Widening Robot Gap, Crabfu Challenge, and more...

What's going on today in my crazy robot world?

• 20:27 How many servos does it take to make a walking humanoid robot? How about 2...? tinyurl.com/69xrmv
• 20:40 If you're going to have robot soccer games and robot battles, you have to have cheerleaders! tinyurl.com/6gtfr2
• 22:17 The Tsukuba Real World Challenge was like the Darpa Challenge only on sidewalks with real people: tinyurl.com/tsukubachallenge
• 05:54 The "robot gap" widens and isn't expected to slow down. tinyurl.com/robot-gap Notice that China and India don't make the top 10.
• 06:42 Homeless UK robot will work for food (tinyurl.com/6aranj), or at least his animator will.
• 08:40 Long before the Terminator or Gort, there was "Tik-Tok of Oz" (1914) and "The Clockwork Man" (1923) tinyurl.com/old-stories
• 08:46 I-Wei needs a new challenge for Crabfu Steamworks, so we thought this 1865 creation would do the trick tinyurl.com/crabfu-challenge
• 09:23 It's not Wall-E, but this mobile robotic arm built using 3 mm signboard and superglue comes close. tinyurl.com/pseudo-wall-e
• 10:47 What do robot loving Australian media consultants do in their spare time? They make Robot Wars videos tinyurl.com/robosapien-wars
• 11:10 The MarvelMind Grumbler robot (tinyurl.com/grumbler-alive) looked really hot, but no website or blog updates in a long, long time...
• 13:07 See the world through the other person's eyes. A simple concept, that some never learn... tinyurl.com/6jju4v
• 13:11 Thanks to the Wizard of Oz, the Tinman got his heart... but what happened next? tinyurl.com/2x83db
• 19:36 Spykee and Rovio duke it out. (tinyurl.com/spykee-vs-rovio) We understand the verdict is being appealed due to cheating by one bot.

Robotically posted for Lem by LoudTwitter

New ROVIO Robot Webcam Tutorials (Video)

We're a big fan of the WowWee ROVIO robot mobile webcam and frequently discover new uses for this innovative product. We've even started to use it as handy portable web conferencing tool since it's light enough to pick up and carry around the office to give our remote co-workers close up views of new projects.

At the same time we understand that new ROVIO owners, especially those that aren't 'geeks', might need a little guidance in setting up and using the robot. So we were very glad to see that Evolution (developer of ROVIO's Northstar navigation system) and WowWee have put together some new, and very helpful, video tutorials (see videos below).

WowWee ROVIO FAQ - Part 2

 

We had a lot of questions and comments roll in about the new ROVIO mobile webcam robot from WowWee and rather than depending solely on our own experience with this ground breaking robot, we asked Robert Oschler, the publisher of RobotsRule.com, a guru on all things WowWee, and another early ROVIO user, to provide responses to our readers ROVIO questions below.

ROVIO Meets The Bomb Squad (Video link)

We knew that ROVIO, the new WowWee mobile webcam robot we reviewed a couple weeks ago, was going to capture a lot of media and public attention, but it never occurred to us to put it head to head with robots from the police bomb squad!

That's exactly what KGO-TV, the San Francisco ABC station did in their "Cell phone controlled robot" news video feature yesterday. How did ROVIO fare? Extremely well. While the KGO-TV reviewer did have some small concerns, the review is very positive and sure to gain a lot of new fans for the innovative robot.