That looks great we thought but the general public / geeks will never see that one, how wrong we were as Tomy announced the worldwide release of the i-Sobot for a surprisingly reasonable £200.

So we got our names down for an i-Sobot and waited, sure enough just a day after the on sale date our little package arrived, inside was the 6.5 inch high i-Sobot was encased in a rather smart box peering out ready to play. The whole office crowded round to get a first glimpse for real. You end up opening the box with an amount of trepidation as the i-Sobot is not a toy in any respect, with 17 servos, 2 gyroscopes and 3 CPU’s this is not a robosapien.

How many children’s toys do you know that come with instructions on how to re align sections and allen keys to do so, this is one for adults and geeks not the under 5’s.

That said we quickly got started with i-Sobot, opening his chest cover and inserting the freshly charged Eneloop batteries, these AAA batteries are 1.3 volts not 1.7 or 1.5 Volt Duracell’s so make sure you only use these. There are many scary warnings about only using the supplied rechargeables and even though we may have tried a set of Duracell’s we’d stay very clear as the i-Sobot ran them flat in 30 mins, compared to nearly 50 on the AAA Eneloops. So apart from being potentially dangerous to the Tomy i-Sobot they are also terrible value for money.

The other major component is the controller which we have to say feels a bit cheap, its covered in buttons and a tiny screen and uses IR to control i-Sobot either manually or in one of its other modes which we’ll cover in a minute.

Power up i-Sobot and he gives a little welcome routine and for us that was the first sign that this pint sized performer was going to be a hoot. He waves says hello and then takes up a null position stood upright on his legs. Now for the modes, there are 4 to chose from, manual control, voice control, programme and special action.

The manual mode allows you to do two main types of operation, you can drive i-Sobot like a radio controlled car, steering him as he walks / shuffles and with a combination of button holds the play station generation master in seconds you can have him saluting walking and dancing. Our 7 year old tester at Lordpercy towers was the only one to master this as she soon had i-Sobot doing some kind of break dancing. The second part of manual mode uses codes to fire short pre programmed steps, these codes are all in the manual and have a vast range of waves and a plethora of karate moves (very Japanese). Our favourite is the “So Sexy” move which makes i-Sobot lay on his back, arch his hip and announce that he is too sexy for his Gyros. Nothing short of amazing!

For those looking for instant gratification, yes that’s us at Lordpercy.com, then you need to switch to special action mode. Here there are much longer sequences often to music, our favourite is the air guitar where i-Sobot struts his stuff and plays one hell of an air guitar show.

The 17 servos many with 220 degrees of rotation allow this little chap some great dexterity, this means he can do the splits, roll over and do a head stand, push ups, even a full forward roll and get back on his feet without breaking into a sweat. Everyone who sees what he is capable of just wants to have a go and soon the 50 min battery life gets a tad annoying, especially when you have to undo 4 Philips screws and take the AAA batteries out to recharge externally each time.

Now the geeks among us will progress onto programme mode, here you can adjust and programme steps into a sequence of your own and save them to make unique actions or motions. You only have to cruise the internet to find users who have got i-Sobots operating computers, dancing and even an i-Sobot fight club!  Perhaps not what Tomy first thought of but hey there is no account for the public.

There are a few downsides, Tomy did not equip this robot with a camera so there is no Aibo style guard dog moves or hooking up to a PC or Mac. Sadly the recharging is a pain and we really would like at least an external jack to plug a charger into with an internal lithium ion battery, even better would be a dock that he sat in when he is feeling run down. For now we make do that he lies down and goes to sleep when he is out of battery.

Overall at £200 Tomy have a real winner here with the i-Sobot, they have packed a hell of a lot of geeky gadget wonders into a device that is far beyond a child's toy and much more accessible than the Sony Aibo which looks vastly over priced in this company. There are many rumours of new versions and also as you could guess a series of hacks and bodges to get inside your i-Sobot, but for us just hunting for the 13 hidden moves is enough, we don’t want to hurt him after all!

Published - 05/08/2008

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