New Products
NEW PRODUCTS
CONSUMER ROBOTS
No Bamboo Required
The animal kingdom has
been brought to life with
Robopanda™ from Wowwee
Robotics™. Robopanda is
a fun-loving and curious
robotic friend who is
animated, talkative, playful,
and 100% interactive.
You can interact with
Robopanda in a natural way
by touching or activating
his many sensors located
throughout his body.
Standing approximately 19 inches tall, Robopanda is
equipped with lifelike behaviors and motions like that of a
genuine panda. Robopanda comes with activity and story
cartridges and is equipped with internal dual-axis
accelerometer tilt sensors. If left unattended for a couple
minutes, Robopanda will go into ‘Sleep Mode.’ Robopanda
also features volume control and safety touch sensors.
Simply insert six ‘C’ batteries (not included) and four ‘AA’
batteries (not included) and Robopanda is fully functional.
Robopanda (ages eight and up) comes equipped with
two “activity and story” cartridges and will be available
this fall for an approximate retail value of $169.99.
Additional cartridges are sold separately and will be
available soon.
For further information, please contact:
WowWee Robotics
Website: www.wowwee.com
MOTOR CONTROLLERS
Sabertooth 2X25
Sabertooth 2X25 is
Dimension Engineering’s
new high power dual 25A
motor controller. It accepts
battery voltages from 6V to
24V and will handle peak
currents of 50A per motor for several seconds. When
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paired with suitable high current motors and batteries,
Sabertooth 2X25 is capable of driving around robots
weighing several hundred pounds.
The Sabertooth 2X25 allows you to control two
motors with analog voltage, radio control, and serial
modes, making it suitable for a wide variety of projects. A
built-in 5V BEC can provide power to an R/C receiver and
a selectable lithium mode will allow you to safely use R/C
LiPo battery packs.
As with Dimension Engineering’s other motor drivers,
the product’s options are set with DIP switches and wiring
connections are made with screw terminals, making it
easy to reconfigure and move from project to project.
Sabertooth’s custom-designed synchronous
regenerative H-bridge topology returns the motor’s stored
inductive energy to the battery in every switching cycle.
This technique results in motors running cooler and
extends battery life. It also provides more responsive
control — allowing you to make instant stops and reverses.
A heatsink comes preinstalled and the unit has
electronic thermal and overcurrent protection for
maximum durability.
The product retails for $124.99 at Dimension
Engineering’s website, as well as other fine robotics stores.
For further information, please contact:
Dimension Engineering
Website: www.dimension
engineering.com
TReX Dual-Motor Controller
Pololu introduces its new TReX Dual-Motor Controller — a versatile
DC motor controller suited for
mixed autonomous and radio
control of small- and medium-sized robots. Three independent
interfaces are offered: radio control
(RC) servo pulse interface; analog voltage;
and asynchronous serial. The serial interface
can switch instantly with one of the other two interfaces,
allowing mixed autonomous and remote control.
For example, a robot could be configured to run
autonomously most of the time, but a human operator
could override the autonomous function if the robot gets
stuck or into a dangerous situation. If the serial
mode is selected as the primary interface, high-resolution
measurements of all five RC inputs are made available to
the autonomous robot controller, allowing for complex
