The RoboSapien was a high end premium consumer piece of robotics released in 2004. I don’t quite remember what it’s launch price was, but I think over $200 which was far too much for a teen like me. I got to see one once in action. I went to a electronics and robotics meetup at a local collage where the main event was mini sumo bots and competitions but someone had got their hands on a RoboSapien and was demoing it, and it was very cool. It made an impression and seemed like a moment in consumer robotics to young me.

I believe the product struggled, as cool as it was, as much articulation as they boasted it had, and how commandibleit was, it was still also a novelty item. It was discontinued with in a few years and I don’t think too many folks had a lot of use for it. Which meant a lot of them hit the second hand market. Some years later, I stumbled upon one in a second hand store in the toy section for about $15 and picked it up immediately. I remember thinking “You don’t know what a fine piece of consumer robotics history you have here”. And sure, the fact this one was being sold with out the remote control (presumably lost) might have further contributed to its lowered price, but to me that was even more fun and part of the challenge. It was to be a project for me to build an IR remote for it to rehab it to its former glory!

I never seriously got into electronics in the end, stayed in programming, which meant this piece of robotics history, mine at least, stayed ornamental. I had it prominently displayed in my bedroom at my parents’, and then my home offices when I moved out. It’s still here with me in my office in the corner proudly on display.

Then today something in my feeds sparked an idea: Someone must have written a remote control for it for Android by now. I started searching but ran into a dead end straight away. I’m old, I remember using IR ports on phones to transfer data. But now with so many higher bandwidth options like bluetooth, most phones, mine included, don’t bother with an IR port. However, I do have a Flipper Zero that I picked up a few years ago and haven’t been making the most use of. One of it’s big selling features is its IR control options. A quick search led me to a small repo where someone had documented the IR spec for the RoboSapien and then documented it and qFlipper, the Linux interface to the Flipper Zero that I don’t think I saw last time I was looking. Dropped the .ir file onto my Flipper Zero, put some batteries into my aged RoboSapien, and amazingly, I now have remote control of it for the first time in all these years.

It may be a 2 decades old novelty piece of kit and a project I never seriously started and only show cased, but consumer tech and hackers did proceed and come through and make it now trivial for me to accomplish that long ago goal. The project I never started, completed in a morning, I think the RoboSapien will be returning to it’s honorary display soon. ☺️