SKIRMISHER

The transforming Bioloid robot is similar to what we saw months ago, but this one can be actually bought for about $900, which behooves us to ask the all-important question: why buy food and send your kids to school when you can buy this cool, new toy? Of course, we already know the answer.

The Bioloid comes with several example programs to make it walk, avoid obstacles and interact with sound. The sensor module in the head of the robot features an IrDA receiver (for communicating with other robots via infrared), three proximity sensors (left, right and front) that can measure distance and luminosity, a microphone for sound detection and a piezo-electric speaker that can be used to play musical scales or generate simple beeping sounds. Using the included software you can program your own custom movements and behavior logic.The brain of the Bioloid is the CM-5 module which runs an Atmel ATMega128 based mcu. The microcontroller’s PCB is housed in a molded plastic enclosure, which also houses the 9.6V rechargeable battery pack. The CM-5 interfaces to the other modules via a TTL Serial Network. This serial network is used to connect motors (AX-12) and sensors (AX-S1), each of which have different Network ID’s programmed in their non-volatile memory.

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