I love robots and remote control toys and Trekbot is both. He comes to us from Desk Pets, the makers of Skitterbot as well as other fun remote controlled toys. The irony is that these things are so fast that they’re much better suited for use on a floor rather than a desk. My review subject nearly escaped, but I pinned him down for some quick photos and video.
Trekbot Features
Like Skitterbot, Trekbot’s remote has a few button batteries that it runs on and the bot itself recharges via a cable from the remote. To charge the bot, you plug the remote’s cable into the bot and insert the retractable USB end of the remote into your computer’s USB port. Charging time is said to be about 30 minutes for about 15 minutes of play time, but mine took only about 15 minutes to fully charge out of the box. When the Trekbot is not charging, the usb plug retracts into the remote.
On the remote are four directional buttons to make Trekbot spin left or right or move forward or in reverse. In addition, there is a center button to stop movement completely. The cool thing about this bot – other than it’s pulsating blue eyes – is that no matter how bad you are at directing it, it won’t flip over. It’s hubless design lets the body of the Trekbot flip while the wheels stay in place, always keeping its little plastic mo-hawk pointed up.
Controlling Trekbot is a little harder than controlling Skitterbot for two reasons. First, it’s simple one-at-a-time control means you’re either moving or turning, but not both at the same time. This means that if you get off track, you have to hit the right or left button to correct the angle and then very quickly jump back to the forward or reverse motion. Alternatively, you can stop movement, turn the bot, and then start again, but turning gets tricky at that speed. I’m sure a little more practice wouldn’t hurt, though. This is actually the exact same as how Skitterbot is controlled, but Trekbot is just a little trickier to get pointed in the right direction sometimes.
Trekbot comes in 4 colors and each has its own frequency. This means that if you and friends want to battle and race as the packaging suggests, you’ll want to be sure to have different colored bots.
Trekbot In Action
Starting around $13, this is a great little toy for anyone, including yourself. It’s fun to play with and even more fun if you have pets that will chase it with curiosity. If I were to buy one in the store, though, it would have to be the black one. What color would you choose?
I did it! I put the game down long enough to write a review of it. OK, to be completely honest, it’s not my all time favorite iPhone game, at least not yet, but it’s in the top two so far. The game I’m talking about, of course, is ColorBuster for the iPhone and it’s a lot of fun for a small price.
Game play
Game play is pretty simple. Your character is hect0r, a cleaning drone robot and you’re on an abandoned space station with all kinds of crates all over that need to be cleaned up. As hect0r, you must visit each level, pushing the crates around until it’s all cleaned up. There’s a few basic rules to play by:
* You push the crates around one space at a time
* You have to pack all the crates of the same color into one
* You need to push the last crate of each color to the teleport
It sounds pretty simple, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. For starters, after the first couple levels, you have to get pretty creative to move crates around. If you push a crate into a corner, for example, you’ll never get it back out. You also get bio hazard crates which need to be pushed out into space, but if you accidentally push a good crate into space, you’ll be unable to complete the level. While it can seem daunting, the first level starts out with some pointers to help you get in the right mind set. Here’s some video of the game play:
Design and functionality
No matter how good the premise of a game may be, the design and functionality can make or break it. This is especially true on the iPhone. One look through the reviews in some of the iPhone applications in the App Store will reveal a lot of people who get upset at an application because it doesn’t function properly (even the free ones). That’s not the case here. The game is designed beautifully with some good color and a good variety of levels and obstacles. Just when I’m feeling good about completing a level, there’s a new one with only one way to solve it. I don’t enjoy a game that I can beat quickly or becomes boring too easily, especially when I pay for it. In the case of ColorBuster, there’s plenty of levels and I think it’ll take some time to get through all of them.
The game functions really well and the controls are fairly smooth. I did have an issue initially with the first level freezing up the first time I played, but it hasn’t happened again in any of the several times I’ve played since. I imagine that was just a one time occurrence which is hopefully isolated to just me. I did install several apps at the same time and didn’t reboot or anything, so who knows. What’s important is that it didn’t freeze up any other times or show any other signs of functioning improperly, so my only frustrations will be at accidentally pushing a crate off the side or into a corner.
Conclusions
There’s a ton of games in the App Store, ranging from free to $10 or more. At only $0.99 (for now – normally $1.99), I can see this game being bought up quickly and running up the “Top 25″ list pretty easily. I try to add my review to any application I install on my iPhone, and this was no exception.
Out of five stars, I gave it a full five. It has the entertainment, functions well, and is priced to please. If you like games that make you think, fire up the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch, search for ColorBuster, and buy it before they kill the 50% off sale.
Robots are usually gender neutral, which means they pretty much pass off as male robots simply because they lack any defining feminine features or a female voice. Most robots are, for all intents and purposes, male. The Femisapien from WowWee is definitely a female bot. If the name didn’t clue you in, how about her attributes?
A thing of beauty
Femisapien is definitely a “she” and she’s built with curves all over. Of course, it’s not just the curves that make the bot. The curves are nice, but there’s a lot more to her beauty than the feminine bust line. Unlike some of the other robots I’ve seen, her facial features are hidden behind a mysterious mask leaving a little to the imagination. She’s also dressed in a lot of white with just enough purple and silver to give her some style. The boots are a little large and the hands are more robot than human, but the rest looks like more like a scaled down woman than a robot.
Your wish is her command
Usually, you find a remote control with a robot, but not this time. Femisapien requires a gentle touch before she’ll entertain you. Every action is controlled by the position of her head and various movements performed with her hands. To start, you have to make sure her head is in the right position. The three modes are Attentive, Responsive, and Learning and each has its own functions that can be performed or programmed. When her had is positioned up, Femisapien is in Attentive mode, in which she pays attention to you and her environment. In this mode, she can wander around and do things like engage you in conversation and blow you kisses (see the video). When looking straight forward, she’s in Responsive mode. In Responsive mode, she responds to walking commands and can interact and do comedy routines with you or even a Robosapien. Learning mode is a little different. In this mode, she’s looking down and ready to learn. This is the mode you want her in to program a routine.
Getting her to perform actions like in the video above is done with either a single gesture on one of her hands or simultaneous gestures on both of her hands. For example, in Responsive mode, you can make her do a clockwise cat walk by just pressing her right hand forward or you can make her just walk forward by pressing both of her hands in a forward direction. In Responsive mode, she can also do a pivot turn, a step turn, walk backwards, and strut as well as perform “Who’s the boss?”, “Hey! Look at me!” and “Beep” routines. In Attentive mode, she can perform a fashion pose, become a backup singer (see video) give our kisses (see video) and more. She’ll even slow dance or walk hand-in-hand with you and she hasn’t once asked me to do the dishes or take out the trash, despite her conversational abilities.
Dress her up
In preparing for this review, I was poking around in the WowWee web site and came across Femisapien Fashion (PDF). It’s a document full of cut-out clothing and accessories that you can add to her. For the review, I decided to cut out and apply the cowgirl outfit.
After printing, I cut out the pieces for the hat and boots as instructed. Then I followed the instructions to put it together and in about 20 minutes, I had a new cowgirl outfit on my Femisapien.
Conclusions
I’ve been a fan of WowWee’s robots, so I figured I’d like anything they send me. I like all the programs, but she feels like she’s missing one thing I’ve gotten used to with WowWee’s products, and that’s the remote. I think they’ve done a great job with everything she can do sans remote control, but it still feels like something is missing. Regardless, she’s a pretty good female representation of a robot and the dancing and kisses really give her that added touch. They’ve also proven, again, that they are the masters of biped robots on a budget. Femisapien is a great cost-friendly robot, but it doesn’t like Domokun very much.
Most people, by now, are familiar with the iRobot Roomba. It’s a small robot that vacuums your floor on its own. It’s a concept that brings us a step closer to the robot maids of the movies. Finally, we can have an army of robots whirring around the house cleaning up after us without a care in the world.
Well, almost.
The best way to really get to know and love (or not love) a Roomba is to have one running around your house for a week, but for those without that option, I’ll try to bring you into the experience with me. My wife and I borrowed one from iRobot for a couple weeks and here’s what we learned.
What it does for you
In short, it’s a robot vacuum that makes its way around your floors, cleaning up any dirt it finds along the way. While it can just randomly run around picking up dirt, it can be set to move in a spiral pattern, which could be optimal in terms of efficiency, depending on your scenario. It also comes with two lighthouses to keep it from wandering into rooms you’d rather it avoided. These aren’t needed to keep it from going off the stairs, though. Although I don’t have stairs in my own home, I asked some friends about their 560 and they assured me that it indeed won’t go bouncing down the stairs.
Getting a Roomba to clean is easier than getting me to clean, because it only had to be told once after giving it a full charge. I just touched the Clean button on the top and it started cleaning. This little guy can clean up carpet or hard floors, adjusting its brushes accordingly and has a bumper to let it gently realize physical boundaries. However, a bumper just means it will retry in another direction and keep retrying if it keeps hitting a wall or object. It did seem smart enough to get going in the right direction pretty quickly. It also returns itself to it’s home base when it’s done or you tell it to dock for charging. Not all models include the scheduling feature, but the 560 does. This feature is ideal for a household with hours of downtime while everyone is at work, like mine. Initially, I was worried that a Roomba would be a big threat to a house full of cats, but they did OK with it. One of them tried to eat the poor little Roomba and the other two just cautiously got used to it.
I’ve discovered another model series called the Pet Series, which this 560 is not a part of. The Pet Series promises a deeper cleaning to grab all that pet hair my cats leave all over the place. Unfortunately, not being a part of that series, the 560 had to make many passes to get things really clean. I don’t vacuum once a day or even once a week, and the Roomba works best when it’s allowed to run frequently. This seems like a downside at first, but it’s really the ideal way to keep your floors clean all the time. After I let him run for a couple days, he seemed to do much better.
What you still have to do
The Roomba is a cleaning robot, but it can’t clean itself. The folks at iRobot have made cleaning pretty easy, but you still have to do it pretty often to keep him running smoothly. When I talk about cleaning, I mean not only the obvious dumping of the removable tray, but also the more arduous cleaning of the brushes and under a couple parts.
Before using the Roomba, it’s probably a good idea to pick up a little, too. With an upright vacuum, you can sometimes be lazy and just work around an ottoman or other objects on the floor, but the the idea is to be even lazier with the Roomba. Pick up some things before he starts his shift and you can relax until he’s done.
Using the Roomba
Using the Roomba was really simple. Even without a manual, it would have been pretty easy to figure out that you press the clean button and it cleans. When button throbs orange, it means he’s running low on energy and red means he’s in desperate need of a charge. Just hit the Dock button and he aligns himself with his charging base and heads home. At first, it looked like he was going the wrong way, but he needs to get a couple feet away first to line up properly.
Don’t force him. With a little patience, he’ll get the job done and get home just fine.
Some pros and cons
Let’s start with the obvious advantage to having a robot vacuum… less work for you. If the Roomba does all the vacuuming, you can come home to nice clean floors every day. One of the things I almost overlooked when writing this is the fact that it’s cordless. There’s something to be said for not having to constantly move around an electrical cord to the vacuum to avoid running over it.
Conclusions
At a reasonable price, this is a great alternative to pushing around an upright vacuum. If you don’t clean often, the Roomba might create more work for you, having to clean the tray pretty often, but you’ll have a cleaner floor. If you vacuum a lot, the Roomba will save you a lot of energy. Just schedule it to do its work while you’re at work and empty the tray when you get home or before bed. The 90 seconds it takes to empty the tray is a worthwhile daily routine for a constantly clean home. If I hadn’t already just spent a lot of money on another unnamed upright, I’d have bought this for half the price.
