Monday, January 14, 2008

Omnibot MK-II by Tomy

Omnibot MK-II by Tomy












Omnibot MK II 5402 - Tomy has created toy robots throughout the years and in the 80's created a line of small personal robots. It is truely astounding what they, and other companies, were able to acomplish utilizing the resources at the time to manufacture and sell this product line.
The Omnibot MK II had a cassette tape player built into the chest area of the robot, which slides out like a drawer to reveal the cassette and could record and playback sequences of commands, as well as regular audio recordings. The built in digital clock with timers and alarms allowed the playback of movement recordings at specified times. It was able to broadcast speech from the remote control handset through a speaker on the robot, and was shipped with a cardboard "home" base which was suggested to be taped to the floor and used as a reference point for programming. The Omnibot carried a specially made tray which slotted into its claws, and could carry objects.
Many hobbyists have turned to hacking, tweaking and improving their Omnibots. Commonly added features are IR Sensors, video cameras, speech recognition chips, stronger motors, microcontrollers, sonars and other advanced enhancements that would not have been possible in the 80s.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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