Servo - December 2007

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by

Pete Miles

Q. Do you know of any humanoid robot kits that cost less than a $1,000? I like the ROBONOVA and KHR-1 body designs with all of the motors and flexibility, but it costs way too much money for me. I was wondering if you happened to know of any cheaper robots out there.

— Andy Kerns

Figure 1. I-Sobot.

A. When it comes to fully articulated humanoid robots, the ROBONOVA ( www.robonova.com) and the Kondo KHR-2HV (www.kondo-robot. com or visit www.trossenrobotics. com) can be purchased for around $1,000. The Kondo KHR-2HV is the next generation of the KHR-1 and is a little less expensive than the KHR-1.

Since humanoid robots are becoming more popular, there are new robot designs coming out each year. A couple that I am aware of are the I-Sobot ( www.iso botrobot.com) which costs around $300 and the RoboPhilo (www. robophilo.com) which costs about $500. I don’t have any personal experience with either of these two robots, but from what I can see

Figure 2. RoboPhilo.

I-Sobot RoboPhilo

6. 5 inches 13 inches

12 oz. 38 oz.

17 20

3 AAA NiMH 6V NiMH

Infrared Infrared Built-in Gyro, Voice Recognition, Pre-programmed

Special Features Speaker, Pre-programmed Motions,

Motions, Programmable Programmable

Approximate Costs $299 ~$500 Table 1. I-Sobot and RoboPhilo Humanoid Robot Specifications.

Specification Height Weight Servos (degrees of freedom)

Power Remote Control

from the videos on their websites, they are very impressive. The I-Sobot is currently available from several places, such as Amazon ( www.amazon.com). The RoboPhilo kit should be available by December 2007. Table 1 shows a few basic specifications for these two robots.

Another option to consider is the BRAT from Lynxmotion ( www.lynx motion.com) which costs less than $300 for the basic kit. This is a very basic bipedal robot kit that has a total of six servos (three for each leg). It requires assembly and a connection with a PC to control the robot. If you add your own electronics and develop your own walking routines, the BRAT can become autonomous.

For those people that want a challenging project, the BRAT is an inexpensive route to get started. All of the parts on the BRAT are interchangeable and expandable, so at a later time, the BRAT can be reconfigured with some additional parts to make a 17 or 19 degree of freedom robot.

On the subject of reconfigurable robot kits, you might want to take a look at look at the Bioloid ( www.tribotix. com) robotics kit. This is a very good general-purpose robot kit which allows you to build many different types of robots, such as dogs, spiders, six-servo walkers like the Lynxmotion BRAT, and even the big 17+ servo humanoid robots. The Bioloid robots use the Dynamixel servos, which are some of the most advanced robotics servos on the market.