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A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics

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125 points danso | 1 comments | 17 Apr 25 15:42 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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eterpstra ◴[20 Apr 25 15:17 UTC] No.43744326[source]▶
I had this thing and loved it but it WAS SO G$DD$MN LOUD!!!!!

It was like the sound of a pile of silverware dumped into a garbage disposal played at full volume over an AM radio.

Great controls, though.

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Mountain_Skies ◴[20 Apr 25 17:25 UTC] No.43745116[source]▶
It was made for Radio Shack by Tomy, who made lots of battery operated toys in that era that were very complex and clever amalgamations of plastic parts. My sister had Tomy's 'Dream Dancer', which was obnoxiously loud, though you don't see that in the advertisements. She never got a second set of batteries once the Christmas day set gave out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8ZP1pnP78

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1. manyturtles ◴[20 Apr 25 18:15 UTC] No.43745430{3}[source]▶
Yep. Sold in the UK as the Tomy ROBO-1. Had great fun playing with it, never knew people had hooked them up to computers. Echoing others' comments, the drive was noisy even when stationary. And it didn't seem to have any sensors to let it know when it had reached the limit of any particular motion. Instead the plastic gears would start to skip loudly with a usefully intuitive "if you keep doing that I'll break" sound.