There were lots of robot-like toys at CES 2018. I will only mention a few, because whilst these toys might look like robots, they typically don’t have enough computing power to enable any true autonomous behavior.
Gomer by GLI (GuoLi Intelligence Technology Co. Ltd)
A mobile manipulator with tank-style tracks and a 3-axis manipulator.
This is advertised as a toy, or to use for STEM/STEAM education.
Their demo was a play pen where Gomer could pickup blocks by detecting their color or fiducial markers (Fig. 1).
Website: www.glitech.com/en
What’s good about the design is that the the arm actually has 3 independent axes: shoulder pitch, wrist pitch and gripper.
More often a robot toy will contain some fancy mechanics to link multiple axes together i.e. the up-down-grasping motions could occur together. This saves on manufacturing costs (one motor Vs. three) but prevents young engineers from hacking the toy into something more useful.
For example, the Cozmo robot has a 1-axis manipulator with a 4-bar linkage and its arm can only move up-and-down.
|
Fig. 1: |
Video 1:
Marketing video showing the robot’s capabilities. Presumably most of this was remote-controlled by a human.  Startup Selfie |
 |
Curo by Cubroid Inc.
A modular robot made from various smart blocks (Fig. 1).
The robot can make various expressions (Fig. 2), many which look similar to the Cozmo robot.
They also have a slightly different version called Artibo.
Website: www.cubroid.com
|
Fig. 2: |
Fig. 3: |
|
Aelos by Leju (Shenzhen) Robotics Co. Ltd
A humanoid robot designed for fun or education, with visual programming software.
Website: www.lejurobot.com
|
Fig. 4: |
Fig. 5: |
|
Ozobot
They have two small, pocket-sized robots called “bit” and “evo” which can be programmed using visual programming software.
They can detect colors and follow lines, although it looks like the low-level programming has been done for you already. For example, you might just call a function followLine(), instead of developing this method yourself from the ground-up.
Website: www.ozobot.com
|
Fig. 6: |
|
|
Innvo Labs
This company made the “Pleo” robot dinosaur.
They had various robotic toys in their booth, including a Zeno by Hanson Robotics.
|
Fig. 7: |
Fig. 8: |
|
Big Clapper by Takaha Kiko
A cheerful greeting robot, best explained by the video below.
Website: www.takaha-japan.com/big-clappy/
|
Fig. 9: |
Video 2:
 Bye Bye World |
|
