WowWee JoeBot, Roborover, Spyball and more at CES 2009

It looks like WowWee is determined to make my 2009 robotics predictions true as soon as they can less than one week from me posting them online. The company that since 2004 has produced a large number of entertainment, toy, and remote controlled robots continued to pleasantly surprise everyone with a few more excellent offerings announced at the Consumer Electronics Show happening right now in Las Vegas. Let me remind you that at CES 2008, WowWee introduced more than 20 new robotic technologies so one wonders how much more could they accomplish in one more year. It turns out that it is alot!

WowWee is showing off 3 very nice, capable, and affordable robots. These are the JoeBot, Roborover, and Spyball.

The first two can be seen in the photo to the left while the last can be seen in the photo at the end of this post. JoeBot looks like an upgraded version of Robosapien with some new sleek looks reminiscent of last year's Femisapien and interactivity software similar to that introduced last year with the Mr. Personality robot. JoeBot, however, has some totally new features including the ability to “beatbox and dance – just tap out a beat and he will repeat it perfectly while grooving along.” Joebot also has a Battle Mode which allows him to “wander freely while tracking and blasting objects with its hand LEDs; you can even challenge him to a “duel” using any TV (IR) remote controller.” For the expected price of $100-150, this is one cool robot toy.

Roborover is a thread-based, exploring robot with a humanoid upper body. Infrared sensors allow it to avoid obstacles and play a hide-and-seek game with children. The robot is supposed to also be capable of learning but it is not clear to me how advanced these algorithms are considering that from my experience any half decent machine learning algorithm would require lots of compute power to be effective. Regardless, for just $69, Roborover has lots of great features.

Spyball is the last of WowWee's 3 new robots for 2009. This is a remote-controlled, Wi-FI-enabled, spy robot similar to last year's Rovio. The biggest difference compared to Rovio is its spherical shape that makes for an interesting locomotion method. When the robot is used to take digital photos or video, it opens up to expose its camera. It looks like this $100-170 telepresence robot is a much cheaper alternative to the company's flagship Rovio product that can navigate autonomously using the TrueTrack beacons.

The FlyTech product line is also growing with the introduction of new flying robots adding more offerings to the very successful DragonFly. The 2 new robots are the UFO look alike Lightstar flyer and the Hoverpod racer. Both of these are designed using durable material and can continue flying for up to 10 minutes per charge.



You can read the company's Press Release with a bit more information about these new robots by clicking here.