Robo News Articles

Welcome to Part 4 of the "Elvinator" project, where we're converting the WowWee Alive Elvis into "The Terminator!" In this small article, we’ll see what those boards are and what they are for. A lot has changed in this design since I started this project, but all is still well and some really great stuff is on its way. You can...

Here's about a 2-1/2 minute video of the WowWee Alive! Elvis taken at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. We put the sunglasses on him to change it up a little from many of the other videos that were taken.

After his shortened rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel" at the beginning of the video, we edited in a summary of some of...

This is the last of four articles about adding a "parasitic" microcontroller to the WowWee Elvis Alive that allows control of this device from an external PC via a serial interface. This article covers the use of MIDI sequencer software (Multitrack Studio) to create animations for the modified Elvis Alive which I am now calling "PC Elvis". Any...

Okay, now we're going to make this Arduino thing do something. Naturally, the first thing one is supposed to do with a microcontroller is make an LED blink (cause just making it turn on isn't that fun).

For part 2 you'll need the following;

Q: My robot keeps staring at strange objects around the room. What is he looking at?

A: He “sees” using Infra Red (I/R) light, a light too “red” for humans to see. However, many appliances, computer screens, TVs, and dimmed lighting emit I/R light which your robot can be attracted to, so he’ll just naturally turn...

Robopanda is a playful and talkative interactive friend. Designed to work without a remote control, Robopanda is controlled directly by touch and sound. Robopanda was the first precursor to the 2008 switch in the WowWee Alive product line from "as real as possible" to "cute and cuddly and real enough". If you were an early adopter of...

Q: What is the difference between each pick up and drop function?

A: Your robot is capable of over 20 different pickups with his full sized hands. These pickups can be combined together for a variety of programmed actions.

For example the following program allows the robot to ask for something and then...

The previous series of articles on this Robocommunity site on establishing a way to drive the Elvis Alive bust from a PC are useful but it becomes a peripheral which can do nothing without being attached to a PC with what amounts to a RS-232 umbilical. This also loads down the PC such that running any other other processes could affect the...