In the last few years, the world of hobby robotics has exploded. Driven by the plummeting prices and ubiquity of microcontrollers, servomotors, and other electronic and mechanical components, the growth in personal fabrication technologies, and the success of such commercial toy, hobby, and domestic robots as Lego Mindstorms, the Robosapien line, Japanese mini humanoids, and iRobot's cleaning machines, robots are finally becoming rather commonplace (if still only in niche domains). And, of course, the robot growth being seeded by these new technologies is watered by the Big Muddy of the Internet, with its rapid information and idea exchange. The next generation of engineers and industrial designers who'll build tomorrow's robots are growing up with Vex kits and Arduino microcontrollers in their hands today.

For our MAKE Robot Gift Guide, we've put together a sampling of robot-related offerings from the Maker Shed, as well as some other robots we fancy. If you give or get any of these bots for the holidays, or especially if you or your recipients, hack them, we'd love to hear about it.

Fully-Assembled Robots

i-Sobot
I was given one of these last holiday season to review. At the time, I was pretty impressed that TOMY was able to offer such a sophisticated mini-humanoid for the price (which was then around $250 street). Now, sadly, after a year, TOMY has decided to discontinue the product. But that means we can offer them in the Maker Shed for $106!. That's a very attractive price for a very hackable little robot, making it the perfect gift for any techno-tinkerer on your list. This 6 1/2"-tall humanoid uses 17 servomotors to somersault, stand on one leg, do push-ups, perform martial arts. It has 180 pre-programmed movements, responds to verbal commands, and performs up to 240 movements in sequence, allowing you to design countless routines, such as programming the device to say "hello," introduce himself, play an air guitar, bow to his audience, and say "good night." Using the included action chart as a guide, you simply enter the alphanumeric codes into the remote control and i-SOBOT reacts in earnest with acrobatics, verbal phrases, and greetings, or you can control his movements manually using the dual joysticks and trigger buttons on the remote. In voice recognition mode, the robot moves in response to ten verbal prompts, such as "Go forward" or "Back up," and acknowledges questions like "How are you?" with appropriate retorts. Ages 10+.

Price: $105.95.

Robots-Dreams.com has some links to i-SOBOT hacking-related resources here.

Rovio Mobile Webcam
We've been fans of WowWee and their growing line of robots since the first Robosapien. Along with iRobot, WowWee has been pioneers in making robot technology commercially viable. To date, most of WowWee's product line has been robotic toys. So we were excited to see them offering a more practical robotic system -- Rovio, a Wifi-enabled mobile webcam you can control from any Web-enabled device over the internet. One of the first commercially-viable robot applications iRobot looked into was basically the same sort of webcam on a robot which would allow remote tele-presence. So, WowWee comes along with a really killer-looking three- (omni)wheeled, semi-autonomous bot you can control over the Web for under $300. It's a start, but Rovio is definitely still in beta. We've only had a day to mess with ours, but we've already encountered many of the problems early users have cited: poor camera performance, especially in middle-to-low lighting, poor audio on the mic, docking station problems, unreliable waypoint navigation, and other annoyances. Also, in an ironic turn-about, the Windows network set-up is pretty much plug 'n play, while the Mac set-up is a little gnarlier. So, we can't recommend Rovio if you're looking for a home/office mobile sentry (what the device is basically marketed as), but it has all sorts of great hacks potential and there's already an enthusiastic hacking community that's started figuring out how to extend capabilities, control it with the Wiimote, and other promising improvements. And we have to mention the design -- it's seriously cool and the glowing blue LED running lights make it look like something, well from that 21st century that hasn't actually happened yet. In the hands of a robot hacker, this is a really fun system with lots of potential. For everyone else, wait for the next version when WowWee will hopefully fix some of the significant problems.
Price: $299.99

Wrex the Dawg
Meet Wrex, the first commercial "junkbot," or so he's been made to look. A dog that only Dr. Frankenstein could love, Wrex appears to have been cobbled together from discarded electronic and mechanical parts. He's a literal junkyard dog. His personality is also stitched together. He has various moods and needs, he can become incorrigible, and he will even go haywire and break down on occasion. His rolling jackpots eyes spin around and have symbols on them that display his moods and desires. He's a cross between Astro from The Jetsons, Scooby Doo, and codeHound (codeHound, you say? It's an early Net-culture thing. I'm old). Like a lot of these highly motorized toys, this thing eats batteries like they were Scooby snacks. The bot requires four Cs and two AAs, the remote takes three AAAs. And be careful getting Wrex out of the big, impressive box he comes in. It's a major undertaking, and cheap, easily-stripped screws are involved. All-in-all, this is an adorable, slightly screw-loose robo-pet that kids will definitely love (and your inebriated adult friends at holiday parties). I can't wait to see how he might get hacked.
Price: $119.99

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/holiday_gift_guide_robots.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/holiday_gift_guide_robots.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/holiday_gift_guide_robots.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/robotics/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Robotics/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fholiday_gift_guide_robots.htmltitle=Holiday%20Gift%20Guide%3A%20Robots%21bodytext=%20In%20the%20last%20few%20years%2C%20the%20world%20of%20hobby%20robotics%20has%20exploded.%20Driven%20by%20the%20plummeting%20prices%20and%20ubiquity%20of%20microcontrollers%2C%20servomotors%2C%20and%20other%20electronic%20and%20mechanical%20components%2C%20the%20growth%20in%20personal%20fabrication%20technologies%2C%20and%20the%20success%20of%20stopic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a