I remember saving birthday money and buying this at Radio Shack as a kid. It was pretty advanced for the time. Then I had the idea to try and make it remote controlled, or just fiddle with the internal electronics a bit. Joke was on me, there were no electronics, this thing was 100% mechanical. A single DC motor, and a fuck ton of gears that were engaged/disengaged by manipulating the two joysticks.
This toy probably equally inspired kids to go into robotics, or to design automotive transmissions.
This was the big lesson for me also. I finally got clearance to take it apart some years later to understand why it was so loud, so weak, so slow and what opportunities there were to connect it to the TI-99/4a.
It was a disappointing setup and I don't think I put it back together.
I did the same thing. My mom was pissed I took it apart.
I was disappointed with how it worked as well. The motor was reused in a different project later, there was no hope in me putting this one back together.
I would put the HERO (Heathkit Educational RObot) in both the same category and the era. [1] HERO came with "an optional arm mechanism and speech synthesizer was produced for the kit form and included in the assembled form". Huge influence on my own life.
I ended up buying three of these as I was going to convert one to computer control. Last year at the ASVARO swap meet I sold the last one I had which had never been opened :-). The guy who bought it was pretty excited to have it (which is the goal of getting rid of one's junk right?)
They were marvels. The only "practical" way to convert them was to put solenoids on the controls to drive them and it was impractical for any repeatable fine grain control. If I ever get a chance to meet the person behind that design I'd certainly buy them a round of their favorite beverage.
I spent hours playing with mine in the mid 80's! The key takeaway - then and now - is that you can generate an incredible variety of motion with a single motor and a well designed gear-box; no software required!
I'm impressed Hiroyuki Watanabe was only 24 years old when he invented/led this.
> “I didn’t have a period where I studied engineering professionally. Instead, I enrolled in what Japan would call a technical high school that trains technical engineers, and I actually [entered] the electrical department there,” he told me.
I think this approach is sorely needed again, in the US at least.
I went to a technical high school for software engineering in Slovenia and it was fantastic. We learned C/C++, SQL, relational data modeling, basics of OOP, assembly for microcontrollers, IT administrator stuff, networking/internet, some basics of web development, a little about operating systems.
I did go to study CS after high school (despite getting a job midway through my senior year), but I still draw on the things I learned in high school every day. It was great. Gave me a lot of practical foundations.
We have technical high schools for all kinds of subjects all over the place. Our community colleges are also doing everything HN thinks they should be doing, and they started like thirty years ago.
When he mentions that a small piece of grit was fouling the gearbox and the pithy advice that small things can cause big problems reminded me of the toaster I fixed recently where I spent most of my time with the electrical aspects ruling out everything until I was left with the electromagnetic latch and after disassembly it turned out a very small toast crumb had found it's way inside and was in the way of a flush contact between the electromagnet and a steel plate. Just cleaning that out brought the toaster back to full function!
It was made for Radio Shack by Tomy, who made lots of battery operated toys in that era that were very complex and clever amalgamations of plastic parts. My sister had Tomy's 'Dream Dancer', which was obnoxiously loud, though you don't see that in the advertisements. She never got a second set of batteries once the Christmas day set gave out.
Yep. Sold in the UK as the Tomy ROBO-1. Had great fun playing with it, never knew people had hooked them up to computers. Echoing others' comments, the drive was noisy even when stationary. And it didn't seem to have any sensors to let it know when it had reached the limit of any particular motion. Instead the plastic gears would start to skip loudly with a usefully intuitive "if you keep doing that I'll break" sound.
They even made "fake" electronic games like Blip -- a version of Pong that was electromechanical rather than electronic. Presumably at the time that was a cheaper way to do things, but like mechanical watches it is in a way more impressive than using electronics.
A bit of lube may help quiet it down, but otherwise I think it's quite reminiscent of how a lot of heavy equipment at the time operated, with an engine that's idling whenever it isn't driving some part through a clutch.
Readit News
This toy probably equally inspired kids to go into robotics, or to design automotive transmissions.
It was a disappointing setup and I don't think I put it back together.
I was disappointed with how it worked as well. The motor was reused in a different project later, there was no hope in me putting this one back together.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_(robot)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJDwO1z9qM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6eAQAZseuM
They were marvels. The only "practical" way to convert them was to put solenoids on the controls to drive them and it was impractical for any repeatable fine grain control. If I ever get a chance to meet the person behind that design I'd certainly buy them a round of their favorite beverage.
> “I didn’t have a period where I studied engineering professionally. Instead, I enrolled in what Japan would call a technical high school that trains technical engineers, and I actually [entered] the electrical department there,” he told me.
I think this approach is sorely needed again, in the US at least.
I did go to study CS after high school (despite getting a job midway through my senior year), but I still draw on the things I learned in high school every day. It was great. Gave me a lot of practical foundations.
It was like the sound of a pile of silverware dumped into a garbage disposal played at full volume over an AM radio.
Great controls, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8ZP1pnP78
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blip_(console)