RS Media Has Plenty of Personality

Last Gadget Standing Finalist

I'm semi-obsessed with WowWee Robotics, the Hong Kong-based company that unleashed one of the most successful mass-market robots a few years ago, the Robosapien. The brainchild of robotics pioneer Mark Tilden, who WowWee lured away from NASA, the Robosapien was a surprisingly versatile bipedal robot that could sit down and get up by itself, as well as remember various combinations of movements; in other words, it was programmable.

I even visited the company's headquarters and the China factory where these toy-cum-robots are made (the same place where Furbies are made). I was impressed that a robot that could actually do a lot was being made in such massive quantities and for much less than, say, the $8,000 Nuvo.

I first saw the RS Media last year while on that trip, but it's only now that the finished product is ready to hit U.S. stores. It's already out in Europe, but won't come out in the States until next year, which is why it's eligible for Last Gadget Standing.

The RS Media's claim to fame is its ability to play and record sound files, videos, and pictures. In addition, it has four onboard personalities (versus the Robosapien's one) and ships with an editing program that lets you create your own personalities and movement routines on your desktop (which you can then send to friends!). The four built-in personalities are fun: a butler with an English accent, a cowboy-style robot, a more traditional-sounding robot, and the super-hero-sounding default RS personality.

I'll confess that I had a hard time figuring out exactly how to use the included software, not to mention scrolling around the various functions on the RS Media, so I'll likely follow up with another post after I've had more time to play around with the RS. I did manage to create a whole dance routine set to a beatboxy tune by Kurtis Mantronik (which I downloaded off of eMusic just for the occasion).

Unfortunately, both the included directions and the online directions were lacking in specifics, so users will ll have to poke around until they get the hang of assigning specific movement macros they've made to specific keys on the RS Media's remote. The movement editor is a little more straightforward (each movement is saved as rectangular box on a horizontal line, which is reminiscent of video editing programs), but getting the routines to the RS Media (via USB) took a few tries as well.

The RS Media has a screen in its chest, which lets you scroll through the different modes as well as view videos and pictures. The screen also serves as a viewscreen for the built-in still and video cameras. So far, I've found the camera functions to be of minimal interest, since focusing on anything requires facing the lens, which is located on the head (right above the viewfinder screen). It would be cool if the cameras had some sort of wireless webcam ability or motion-sensitive auto-filming capability, but maybe next time.

I also downloaded some MP3s to the RS Media. I'm not crazy about the limited, semi-muffled sound output from the speakers, which are located on the robot's back and hands. It's fine if the guy is moving around and dancing to your tunes, but it leaves a lot to be desired as a stand-alone player.

Overall, the RS Media is more sturdy and graceful, movement-wise, than any previous iterations. And the speakers, though not great for music, are noticeably better when the RS Media is just talking.

I think it's a good candidate for Last Gadget Standing because it combines relatively complex and customizable programming capabilities and nifty multimedia features in a device that costs less than $400 (again, I bring up Nuvo).

That's my quick take based on a couple of hours of playing around with this thing, but I'll report back after I've had some more time with it.

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