You can’t walk the aisles at Toy Fair without running into a robot or two. This year was no exception, and we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite examples of the awesome self-propelling, quasi-thinking creations.
Wowwee’s Tipster robot is a great option for kids just getting into robotics. Not only does the little dude come with little hanging robot toys, he plays an updated version of musical chairs with them. As he plays music, he tries to dislodge the toys and beat you at your own game. Did we mention he’s adorable?
Wowwee also has a Roboraptor X with autonomous modes. He moves around by himself in some cases, is motion controlled, and swishes his tail (as all good dinosaurs do). Is anyone else concerned that we’re giving dinosaur robots autonomy? We are a little concerned.
If you’re more in the mood for a few classic (dare we say steampunk?) desktop robots for your workspace, look no further than Kikkerland. There was a whole table of these in one aisle, and we seriously thought about stopping and winding them all up just to see how much chaos they could cause should any of them take flight.
via Kikkerland.com
GLX International brought cool flying drones to the party. There were even a few gigantic ones that had cameras attached. They come equipped with all sorts of special features that allow it to flip in the air and return to you with the flick of a joystick. Personally, we liked the minidrones more. They pop up in the air and do flips and are generally less terrifying than the large propeller-driven, camera equipped ones.
By far the most diverse and impressive sets of robots for all levels of play came from HexBug. Their name alone gives away some of their products – microbugs that jostle around tables and through mazes. They’ve also worked with engineers to create robots inspired by da Vinci’s classic machines. They have created bugs big and small, and dinosaur kits that let young Makers create their robots from scratch with easy to learn programs.
They’ve also created an array of water-dwelling robots that are incredible. Here’s the goldfish but there are also seahorses and jellyfish in their newest lines.
We also feel it’s incredibly important that you know about the robots they’ve created for the youngest at heart among us…namely our cats.
Now that we have a whole list of robots we want to buy and install in our homes for entertainment value, we just have to wait for them to show up on store shelves! Which of these robots would you snap up in a second if you had the chance? Tell us in the comments below!