Since the release of the original Robosapien, WowWee has been well known for making cool robots that won’t cost an arm and a leg. Always working on new robots to entertain kids and adults alike, they came out with the Tri-Bot some time ago and they put one in my hands last week to review.

A fun design
Whenever I buy a robot that you expect to act like a robot, I’m of the opinion that it should look the part. I think WowWee has accomplished this with the Tri-Bot. He certainly looks like a robot, but he also looks like a fun robot. His eyes and grin are always wide, hinting at his excitement, his face in general makes me think he’s about to tell a joke, and he’s bright red, which is a bold step away from the white, grey and other subtle colors normally found on robots.

His three-wheel design is also a nice switch, too, apart from being functional. It’s another reminder that while he has personality, he’s still a robot and can zip around pretty quickly. On the back, he bears a large handle which seems a bit out of place like when you see those over-sized spoilers on little suped-up cars. Maybe that’s the point, or maybe it’s just because it’s really handy, but that was the only visual aspect of this little guy I didn’t find appealing.

Programming, mobility and accelerometer-base controls
The first thing you notice about Tri-Bot is his three big omniwheels. An omniwheel is a wheel that includes smaller wheels around its edges that are perpendicular to the larger wheel’s rolling direction. This gives Tri-Bot a lot more directional mobility than any other wheeled robot I’ve experienced. I hate that these wheels are a magnet for carpet lint and cat hair, but they operate well on carpet, wood, and tile, so it’s a fair trade-off.

Another new feature is the remote, itself. It makes good use of an internal accelerometer. If you’ve ever seen how a Wii remote works, this is nothing new… except that it’s in a robot’s remote control. Like any other accelerometer-controlled device, it takes some practice. To move Tri-Bot forward, you just lean the remote forward while holding the trigger on the bottom and to make him back up, lean it back. Leaning the remote to either side makes him move sideways in that direction. It’s about time we see this is a recreational robot, and the timing is perfect with all the iPhone games that work in the same way.

For those not yet comfortable with this new-fangled control system, this remote still has the expected front/back/left/right directional buttons as well as buttons in between those to accommodate forward-right, left-reverse and similar diagonal movements. The omniwheels allow him to spin around, too, so they’ve thrown in a couple spin buttons. He spins fast, too. So fast, that it’s a little hard to be precise with it. Above the cluster of directional buttons is the HOME button. When the HOME button is pressed, Tri-Bot searches for his beacon (the remote) and will try to return to it, which seems to work pretty well. Below the directional buttons are the program record and playback buttons which let you, you guessed it, record and play back a series of movements. Following those is the little brain button. Really, that’s his roaming button. When you press it, you’re telling Tri-Bot to wander around on his own, exploring and making comments.

The bottom half of the remote has four buttons: DEMO, GAME, GUARD, and ALARM. The DEMO button should be pretty obvious. It tells him to perform a demonstration for you, which you can see in the video below. The GAME button lets you enter game mode and choose a game. The GUARD button activates his guard mode, which mostly meant he sat there waiting for something to happen and the ALARM button activates his alarm mode and allows you to set his alarm. The alarm mode (also demonstrated in the video below) is a neat idea, but I don’t know when I would realistically use it. The reason for this is that you can set the alarm to go off anywhere from one to twelve minutes after setting it, but not more. When it goes off, Tri-Bot runs around randomly, flashing and making all kinds of noise. If Tri-Bot had a little digital clock and I could set the alarm for an actual time, it would be a great feature. All three games are driving games where you have to complete a series of navigational actions to complete a game and are good for getting real practice moving Tri-Bot around.

Before reading my final thoughts on this little guy, take a look at the video below of him in action. You can also see the full photo set here.

The final verdict
While my Robosapien 2 is still my favorite, the Tri-Bot comes packed with everything a toy robot should. It’s designed to be appealing to any age group, gets around quickly, is funny, smart, and seems pretty durable. Aside from the alarm, Tri-Bot is a near-flawless, well thought out winner, smartly priced around $50. As an adult, I get more excited about things like web-based control over wi-fi and a built in camera, but for any child, this would be the gift that could help re-validate your “World’s Greatest _____” mug in that child’s eyes.

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