It's a RAD, RAD, RAD, RAD World
Chapter Two: Pretty RAD after all
(or "All the girls say he's pretty fly for a white 'bot")
The first of two RAD auction wins has arrived, in quite a large box. I read online that the RAD is about 19 inches from floor to the top of his head, and the box looked a little smaller than that, but it turned out the seller used the robot to help pack himself; he apparently bent the thing over at the waist, thus saving a little on height! Cute trick... I wonder if they ship iSOBOTs all bent over and wrapped around? I opened the box, drug out all the parts (Tyco battery and charger, remote control, and a snack tray that fits into the drink holder), and inserted the large rechargeable battery into RAD... I was NOT prepared for the response. Remember, RAD is all bent over from shipping, so when I popped the battery in he powered up and started TALKING. I think it was something like this:SYSTEMS CHECK! (Yeah, RAD kinda yells enthusiastically)
(a klaxon sounds several times, VERY ANNOYING)
(begins to "sit up straight", then goes right back to where he was)
ARMS OPEN!(arms begin to open)
ARMS CLOSE!
(arms close)
(all the lights flash a few times)
SYSTEM CHECK COMPLETE!
(RF'y noise from RAD's speaker, likely listening for voice transmission)
Now, that may not seem like much, but take two things into account; I don't have a manual for RAD so I have no idea what all it is supposed to do, and I bought it on eBay for about $12.50 so I really didn't expect anything more than a track-based remote controlled vehicle. I certainly didn't expect him to talk, as I thought that was a function of RAD 3.0 and 4.0 (which are voice controlled). I got sick of the voice pretty quickly, and my wife found an old forum discussion where someone mentioned what the "SHIFT" button on the remote is for; hold SHIFT and then the left stick becomes an on/off switch for the lights and the right stick becomes an on/off switch for the voice. RAD looks surprisingly void without the lights on (note to self: add more lights!) but he is blissfully quiet when I open and close his arms now.
RAD himself is very interesting. Thanks to the independent left and right track control you can do a 360 in only slightly more space than RAD's footprint, which I showed my wife to amusing effect by putting RAD on top of our audio cabinet and making him spin without going off the edges. The controls are not fluid unfortunately, and there is some kind of latency in starting a movement as well as concluding a movement so you have to be aware that turns are sort of jerky and likely to happen at certain predictable angles.
By that I mean that if RAD is going forward and you turn then RAD will sort of jerk about 15-20 degrees to whichever side you are turning to. I had hoped for "real-time, analog" control like a nice R/C car, but it isn't that good. The various motor systems themselves don't inspire confidence, as they all have that "plastic grinding on plastic" sound of a cheap plastic toy. Not just the tracks either, this thing sounds like hell just bending over or flexing his arms. Driving it is QUITE the obnoxious experience in crap plastic noise, but I have to say that it seems to do the job. Given the front lip clearance of the base I didn't think he would be able to go over ANYTHING, but I did successfully drive him over several pieces of clothing that were lumped up on the floor in the doorway. Oh, it took me a good 30 seconds to do it, and I did get stuck several times, but using the same trick that can get your car tire out of mud I rocked the drive back and forth and at various angles until he finally got over the pile. I felt oddly triumphant. There is a "linkage" of some kind on the bottom of the base, a knob that is turned one way for "low" and the other way for "high". Since this is directly underneath the drive section it seems likely it was for speed control, but I am not sure that is the case. I think I read somewhere that it is more of a torque control, so maybe I would have climbed that pile of laundry easier if I was in "high" (I was in "low"). I'll do some tests and see which it is, speed or torque.
The waist and arms are pretty simplistic. The torso bends down and up, so you can make him bow albeit kind of slowly, but that isn't what it is for. The bending of the torso allows the arms to be useful, and without that feature they would be all but pointless (like the RAD 3.0 and 4.0). The torso bends backward to about a 10-15 degree angle and forward so far he can touch the floor. I placed a medicine bottle on the ground about 4 inches from the base, and I had no trouble at all bending over and picking it up. I am not sure what the maximum "grip" pressure is, but it could crush an egg quite easily. Since the controls are "jerky" as I said before this would make actually picking up an egg a bit tricky, as I don't know that you could accurately visually gauge how much force is being used, and it would probably be possible to overshoot your desired grip pressure and crush it. Until I figure that out I guess my idea of putting a live kitten in RAD's arms isn't going to happen. ;) The hands have some rubber pieces; the ones inside the palm are probably for better grip, and the ones on the tips of his hands appear to stop the hands fromclosing completely. The fully closed position leaves a gap that is somewhat football shaped, and I'm sure that was done so it would be easier to pick up beverage cans and bottles. Hmm... wonder if RAD can crush an empty soda can. Must experiement...
The missile system was SHOCKING. I pressed the FIRE button on the remote, and watched in slackjawed amazement as the missile housing started to rotate and fairly quickly launched a spring-propelled foam missile across the room about 10 feet and smacked the wall with a surprising level of force. Of all the BSO's on this thing (Bright Shiny Objects) I have to say the missile launcher is unbelievably satisfiying. :) I am fairly sure the way the gun works like vaguely similar to a Gatling gun; you push a missile into an empty launch tube and it snaps into place with a satisfying "snikt", then when you press fire on the remote it drives a motor that rotates the launch tubes until it reaches a particular spot that releases the catch mechanism and allows the missile to be forced out of the launch tube via compressed spring propulsion. Absurdly clever. I swear, toy manufacturers come up with some of the best tricks.
There are three red LEDs inside the "mouth" that sometimes have a chaser pattern, although I still haven't figured out when other than during the initial systems check on power-up. The chest lights are weak, likely because they are actually wheatgrain lightbulbs and aren't being driven very hard. If nothing else I will replace all the lightbulbs with LEDs. Looks like I have to open that area anyway, as a couple of the torso lights in the middle of both sides have popped out of the guide they are supposed to be in. While the torso lights are almost passable as-is, the eye lights are not. Trust me, the photos I took look a lot better than real-life. RAD 2.0 has a fairly large "ocular cavity" and the little underdriven wheatgrain bulbs in there do not come close to doing the ocular cavity justice. One of the nice things about the 2.0 compared to the 1.0 was the addition of two big ocular cavities; not at all important to the function, I just like it better aesthetically and from an anthropomorphic standpoint. And yes, I like saying "ocular cavity"... it brings back fond memories of Phil Hartman. Those of you who know what I mean know what I mean, and those of you who don't might not want to. ;)
The speaker sucks ass. There, I said it. For whatever reason this is an area where toy engineers do very, very poorly. I can take any crappy speaker from a toy that you give me, build an enclosure that has the perfect dimensions to maximize the audio quality, and you will flatly not believe how good it sounds by comparison. Sony has made some very credible micro-speaker travel systems in the past, and they were nothing but an adequate speaker element in a VERY well designed, tuned-port plastic enclosure. Toy manufacturers would do well to consult a speaker guru (not that Sony is), especially in the toys that have vast internal cavities... like the RAD. His head alone has a volume of air that is pretty close to some bookshelf speakers I have owned, so I KNOW they could have done substantially better. This is another easy upgrade, and essential if I want to have decent audio playback capabilities. You can see the speaker mounted inside the mouth; much to my surprise it is pointing DOWN and not pointed out the mouth. The speaker actually projects out a port just under the chin, and the backside of the speaker is open to the air, so this means there is effectively no speaker "enclosure" per se and partially accounts for the crappy audio quality.
The controller is easy to hold and understand, and a child of the 80's like me who was raised on a steady diet of Battle Zone in the arcades immediately knows how to drive the independent tracks. With the exception of the aforementioned stuttery latency the RAD drives just like Battle Zone tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone). The "waist" button looks like it is one button, but it is a rocker so pressing one edge or the other gets you the desired motion. The "talk" button is identically styled but is not a rocker, just press and hold to speak through the RAD's speaker. The quality is pretty awful, not only because the RAD's speaker sucks but because the audio is transmitted over 27MHz like all the control signals, and this frequency is highly likely to ALWAYS have some ambient noise due to its high historical usage. Interesting note about the R/C system; you cannot go forward AND talk without serious problems. If you are going forward and press the talk button the RAD will lurch to a halt and stutter forward a couple inches every couple seconds for as long as you hold down the talk button. Lame as hell, and this was sold in 1999 so there really isn't an excuse like the technology wasn't there or wasn't practical or wasn't cheap enough. Also, given the FCC limitations on 27MHz transmitters I suspect this thing won't get squat for range. I feel a new Futaba or a home-brew controller coming on.One of the most incredible things that happened when I unpacked it was that my wife Deborah was impressed and thought it was really cool. She even tried to find some info for me on the net, because she knew I didn't have a manual. That's all fine and dandy, but I was quite surprised to find that 3 hours later she was still trolling the net for more info. Turns out that certain kinds of women DO appreciate cool robots.
There is an RJ11 jack in the back on the torso, with no markings to indicate what it is for. Apparently Toymax had planned to bring out accessories that would utilize this port, but they never did. Deborah found a newsgroup posting from a few years ago that mentioned someone had traced back the four connections and they appear to go to power, ground and two to the processor (which is under epoxy). This same discussion also went into a little detail regarding markings on the main CPU board, marking that just so happen to coincide with the standard pin names of Microchip PIC microcontrollers. Whatever the CPU, I am betting the RJ11 port is either standard I2C or some basic serial with minimal handshaking. If I get extremely bored I may 'scope out any possible signals on that port, but it isn't much of a priority as I cannot think of much that you could do with it without having access to the RAD's firmware. Along those lines... I am very familiar with PIC hardware and I find it very unlikely that the RAD used flash memory on the micro, so there is no chance in hell of ever reprogramming the micro since it was almost certainly an OTP (one-time programmable, a style of memory where the internal programming wires are deliberately burned up with too much voltage, to prevent anyone from accessing it). So, lacking any real control or ability to upgrade the processing and RF capabilities I still have my same dilemma; either substantially upgrade by virtually gutting the sucker, using new drive controllers and a new brain with considerably more expandability, or just paint the sucker black, upgrade the lights with some LED bling, and call it a day.I am still waiting for my other auction-won RAD 2.0, which I think will be coming with no controller or battery or anything (at least they were not expressly mentioned in the auction, and not present in any photos) so I expect to use it for spare parts or I'll gut it and use my own electronics (once I verify the drive section still works). I am fairly certain I am going to go with a black color scheme, as I find the white color scheme to be too toylike. I played around in Photoshop, applying different colors to him to see what might look good,
and I think that black would look awesome (very Sithy with the red lights, though I lean towards green or blue... very Jedi!). To that end I have bought a can of "paint for plastic", which is not in fact paint at all but really a form of dye that penetrates and bonds with the surface. The original RAD 2.0 stickers suck too, so they will all come off and stay off. The lighting not only needs some powerful LEDs to replace the bulbs (more light, less power consumption), but it also begs for several other accessory lights to be added, especially to the base. The existing plastic bezels for the lights are transparent, when I think they should be translucent, so I expect to lightly sand the inside surfaces to "frost" them. BTW, sanding the INSIDE surface will make it impossible to see the lights mounted inside, but allow the nice diffuse light to be seen, AND have a nice shiny surface on the front. Sanding the OUTSIDE surface would look pretty lame (this is basically the trick I use for one of my commercial products that has a 3 foot wide acrylic bezel covering 128 high-power LEDs). I think an integrated laser pointer mounted on an arm would be interesting, and just barely pointable using combinations of open/close arm, waist up/down and base rotation. I'm very, very tempted to put a flamethrower in, just because it is reasonably easy to do and soooo damn impressive... who DOESN'T like a robot with a flamethrower? Well, besides Sarah Conner and Taliban hiding in caves. I priced out some Wifi video cameras, and they are either too expensive or too low resolution. I have a couple "video transmitters" I bought on eBay, and they have an absolutely pathetic and nigh useless range so I know not to even try. Let me emphasize that again, because so many people I know think that it is an alternative; those cheap video transmitters have really bad range and really awful video quality... they are effectively unusable, so never buy one for any reason. I looked over Microsoft's Robotics Studio and it looks quite daunting and extremely limited in the hardware it can control so I don't think it will do me any good. I looked at 3-4 other robotics software packages, and they either appear to be far too difficult or far too simplistic... and I still cannot see how you could control your own robot design. Everyone seems to assume that you bought a commercial robot, and accordingly support a very few hardware configurations, but I saw no indication that it would be possible to drive your own controller without essentially writing a driver in VB or C++, and that boys and girls is pure bullshit. I think we need a version of LOGO that can address certain signal standards like I2C, TTL serial, TTL, CMOS, etc. so that all you have to do is design your robot so that (for example) 0-5v would drive your motor 0-100% (or to a given position, for servos). What the hell is so hard about that? I see a product here, especially in the low-end pseudo-educational market. Since none of the robot software I have seen would appear to work with homebrew controllers, and since I cannot (or will not) take the time to program an A.I. in firmware, and since I cannot write a desktop app I don't think the autonomy aspect is likely to happen, at least not with the RAD 2.0. I am heavily leaning towards telepresence though; I'll drive it via remote control but I will also be able to see through the RAD's eyes, allowing me to pilot him far outside my visual range. That should be just enough to make him worthwhile.
While waiting for the remaining RAD to show up I will continue to ponder.
If you would like to give me some feedback on this article/story/rant, then click here to leave a comment. I'd love to hear from anyone with robotic ideas or advice.
(C) 2008 Don Stratton
Chapter 3 coming soon, back to the TOC
