Since we're talking about cool toys from back in the day, let me ask if anybody can help me with something. I had a cool toy back in the late 70's, early 80's, and I'd occasionally like to mention it or refer to it (or maybe even indulge nostalgia and try to find one on ebay to buy) but I can't remember what it was called.
Does anybody remember something like this: a wheeled toy that I vaguely recall had stylings something like a tank or an APC or something - or maybe one of those weird vehicles from Damnation Alley[1] - but with a bunch of buttons on top with numbers and directional arrows. You could "program" the thing to roam around on its own by pushing a sequence of directional arrows and numbers. It was something like "Go forward 5 units, turn left, go 4 units", etc. I don't even know now what distance units it used, or if the speed was programmable. Once you programmed it there was a "Go" button that would send it off on its little adventure crawling around the living room (and promptly getting stuck under the TV stand or something, but that's neither here nor there).
oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker community and everything.
It would be fun to build a modern version of this, with an Arduino or Rpi or something providing the "brains", and with some input sensors (ultrasonic distance sensor, camera, etc). But instead of just having the input buttons on top, you could also program it over the network (or USB) using a real programming language.
I guess that wouldn't be much different though, than some of the other low-end experimental robotics platforms that are out there?
Today there are the Programming Journey Robots from Terrapin. My spouse uses the simplest, the Bee-Bot, in her kindergarten classroom. She wrote a grant to get about 15 of them. They use Terrapin's Logo and are much loved by her students.
J Bull Electrical in England used to sell "Big Trak Gearboxes", the little plastic gearboxes with two motors, for a few pounds for *years*. For all I know they still do. Their website is as full of bizarre stuff as their magazine ads used to be - from random bags of components to Sinclair C5 motors to the aforementioned gearboxes to Chinese Army air rifles which were so powerful you needed a firearms cert for them even back in the comparatively lax 1980s!
I'm glad to see they're still on the go. Their adverts in Wireless World and Television were a great source of wonder for my geeky friends and I when I was at school some 30-odd years ago, and finding they're still as batshit as ever has cheered me up no end.
Now I wonder if Display Electronics ever shifted those 9" bare chassis Microvitec colour monitors from National Air Traffic Control, or indeed their deactivated heat-seeking missiles?
If so, they remind me a bit of outfits like American Science & Surplus, or Electronics Goldmine. Real eclectic collection of bizarre and weird stuff. :-)
That's the one. Mad, isn't it? They used to take out full-page ads with their surplus electronics and air rifles and bike tyres and ghods alone know what else.
I got one of these a few months back at a vintage store for $15. The owner couldn't pay me to take it off his hands — he reduced the price from $20 as soon as I expressed interest.
It works wonderfully! Once I rounded up a ton of D-cell batteries...
It has the pull-behind trailer, which is a genius design. The hitch pin is also a TRS plug which transfers the signal from the tank to dump the trailer. It also allows the tank to do a complete 360 while towing, since the hitch reaches out and over, then down, to the center of the tank.
The whole thing is just a brilliant piece of engineering and represents, as far as I can tell, the first fairly affordable "AI" home toy.
Does anybody remember something like this: a wheeled toy that I vaguely recall had stylings something like a tank or an APC or something - or maybe one of those weird vehicles from Damnation Alley[1] - but with a bunch of buttons on top with numbers and directional arrows. You could "program" the thing to roam around on its own by pushing a sequence of directional arrows and numbers. It was something like "Go forward 5 units, turn left, go 4 units", etc. I don't even know now what distance units it used, or if the speed was programmable. Once you programmed it there was a "Go" button that would send it off on its little adventure crawling around the living room (and promptly getting stuck under the TV stand or something, but that's neither here nor there).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)