[HN Gopher] A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
___________________________________________________________________
A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
Author : danso
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-04-17 15:42 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wAqgu
| chillingeffect wrote:
| There was an article in i think Radio Electronics at the time to
| connect it to a C64.
| jim_lawless wrote:
| There was a pretty detailed article in the May 1985 Radio
| Electronics that mentioned interfacing it to a VIC-20:
|
| https://archive.org/details/radio_electronics_1985-05/page/n...
|
| Transactor Magazine volume 7, issue 4 (1987 ) had an article on
| interfacing it to a C64:
|
| https://archive.org/details/transactor-magazines-v7-i04/mode...
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Hot Coco had an article about hooking it up to the TRS-80 Color
| Computer.
|
| https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Magazines/Ho...
|
| >By moving the joystick (a mechanical linkage), you select one
| of a series of rotating cams that connect a gear to the power
| shaft. This is probably the worst design possible for
| modification to electronic control.
|
| At the time I was disappointed that it didn't use (non-
| existing) motors already in the Armatron but looking back at it
| with an understanding of the mechanical design, it's easy to
| see why they went with that decision. The only other choice
| would have been to connect to the joysticks themselves. The
| added motors probably improved the operation quite a bit.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| Ahhh so it had only motor that got switched in and out
| mechanically, eh? That must be why it was always whirring
| even when not moving. I guess small motors were not cheap
| back then :)
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Is my computer hacked or is everyone else seeing a giant
| subscribe banner on this page?
| EncomLab wrote:
| I spent hours playing with mine in the mid 80's! The key takeaway
| - then and now - is that you can generate an incredible variety
| of motion with a single motor and a well designed gear-box; no
| software required!
| eterpstra wrote:
| I had this thing and loved it but it WAS SO G$DD$MN LOUD!!!!!
|
| It was like the sound of a pile of silverware dumped into a
| garbage disposal played at full volume over an AM radio.
|
| Great controls, though.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It was made for Radio Shack by Tomy, who made lots of battery
| operated toys in that era that were very complex and clever
| amalgamations of plastic parts. My sister had Tomy's 'Dream
| Dancer', which was obnoxiously loud, though you don't see that
| in the advertisements. She never got a second set of batteries
| once the Christmas day set gave out.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8ZP1pnP78
| manyturtles wrote:
| Yep. Sold in the UK as the Tomy ROBO-1. Had great fun playing
| with it, never knew people had hooked them up to computers.
| Echoing others' comments, the drive was noisy even when
| stationary. And it didn't seem to have any sensors to let it
| know when it had reached the limit of any particular motion.
| Instead the plastic gears would start to skip loudly with a
| usefully intuitive "if you keep doing that I'll break" sound.
| userbinator wrote:
| A bit of lube may help quiet it down, but otherwise I think
| it's quite reminiscent of how a lot of heavy equipment at the
| time operated, with an engine that's idling whenever it isn't
| driving some part through a clutch.
| gedy wrote:
| I'm impressed Hiroyuki Watanabe was only 24 years old when he
| invented/led this.
|
| > "I didn't have a period where I studied engineering
| professionally. Instead, I enrolled in what Japan would call a
| technical high school that trains technical engineers, and I
| actually [entered] the electrical department there," he told me.
|
| I think this approach is sorely needed again, in the US at least.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The grass was so green back then. Today leaves are brown and
| there is a patch of snow on the ground.
| Swizec wrote:
| I went to a technical high school for software engineering in
| Slovenia and it was fantastic. We learned C/C++, SQL,
| relational data modeling, basics of OOP, assembly for
| microcontrollers, IT administrator stuff, networking/internet,
| some basics of web development, a little about operating
| systems.
|
| I did go to study CS after high school (despite getting a job
| midway through my senior year), but I still draw on the things
| I learned in high school every day. It was great. Gave me a lot
| of practical foundations.
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a math and science school in my state but it was a
| boarding school, and that did not seem like a good idea for me.
| gopher_space wrote:
| We have technical high schools for all kinds of subjects all
| over the place. Our community colleges are also doing
| everything HN thinks they should be doing, and they started
| like thirty years ago.
| siavosh wrote:
| Is there a modern version of this as a toy for a kid?
| shove wrote:
| I still have the muscle memory for these controls. I was
| completely gobsmacked when I disassembled it and saw the
| concentric rings of gears. Very very cool.
| hinkley wrote:
| How does this thing work?
| smcameron wrote:
| This video shows the innards of the thing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMdmkONa7qs
| Gracana wrote:
| That is _way_ cooler than I expected.
| hinkley wrote:
| Gosh, no wonder it was so loud.
| gene-h wrote:
| A similar single motor robot hand has been made that uses
| electrostatic clutches instead of mechanical clutches[O].
|
| [0]https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08469
| irickt wrote:
| Tandy Armatron Dissection http://www.starborneworks.com/?p=22
| 6510 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMdmkONa7qs
| userbinator wrote:
| Incidentally, planetary gears as clutches is also a feature in
| various Japanese VCR mechanisms.
| whartung wrote:
| Friend had one of these. I think he got it from Radio Shack. This
| was right up their alley.
| thedougd wrote:
| Oh man, I completely forgot I had a robot arm as a kid. I had the
| "Mobile Armatron" variant:
|
| https://www.theoldrobots.com/armatron3.html
| victor106 wrote:
| Any recommendation on a robotic kit that can be purchased now?
| WillAdams wrote:
| Would it be possible to replicate this mechanism using Lego
| Technic bricks/mechanisms?
| kbouck wrote:
| didn't read article due to paywall, but the answer is most
| likely yes. i was able to build a basic 2-degrees-of-freedom
| robot-arm grabber using lego technic and power functions and
| was controlled by scratch on a raspberry pi. lego also has
| pneumatics.
| pvorb wrote:
| There's an industrial robot arm built out of LEGO Technic
| bricks by OrangeApps, a small company related to German robot
| manufacturer KUKA. [1] It's primarily used for educational
| purposes.
|
| Disclaimer: I work for a subsidiary of KUKA.
|
| [1]: https://www.orangeapps.de/?lng=en&page=apps%2Fers3
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Somewhat related to this. What would recommend for a young kid 5
| and up to get start in today's robotics. The issue today seems
| more like there is a lot.. which is kinda opposite to what when I
| was growing up ( if it existed in toy form, it was prohibitively
| expensive at best ).
| dan_linder wrote:
| No personal experience with them, but KiwiCo seems popular to
| introduce kids to electronics:
|
| https://www.kiwico.com/
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Used to play with this. Always wanted one - my best friend had
| one
| fmajid wrote:
| My little brother had one, circa 1985. I don't think the
| educational content was all that great, compared to our Apple
| II+.
| pryelluw wrote:
| We had one of these and it definitely sparked my long running
| interest in robotics. Which expanded into small scale robotics
| manufacturing and then onto 3d printing. I'm now playing with
| LLMs to discover ways to incorporate into smaller robots. More
| excited these days about what is to come.
| brk wrote:
| I remember saving birthday money and buying this at Radio Shack
| as a kid. It was pretty advanced for the time. Then I had the
| idea to try and make it remote controlled, or just fiddle with
| the internal electronics a bit. Joke was on me, there were no
| electronics, this thing was 100% mechanical. A single DC motor,
| and a fuck ton of gears that were engaged/disengaged by
| manipulating the two joysticks.
|
| This toy probably equally inspired kids to go into robotics, or
| to design automotive transmissions.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Oh man this takes me back. Armatron and Speak-N-Spell were so
| great!
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| I would put the HERO (Heathkit Educational RObot) in both the
| same category and the era. [1] HERO came with "an optional arm
| mechanism and speech synthesizer was produced for the kit form
| and included in the assembled form". Huge influence on my own
| life.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERO_(robot)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I ended up buying three of these as I was going to convert one to
| computer control. Last year at the ASVARO swap meet I sold the
| last one I had which had never been opened :-). The guy who
| bought it was pretty excited to have it (which is the goal of
| getting rid of one's junk right?)
|
| They were marvels. The only "practical" way to convert them was
| to put solenoids on the controls to drive them and it was
| impractical for any repeatable fine grain control. If I ever get
| a chance to meet the person behind that design I'd certainly buy
| them a round of their favorite beverage.
| userbinator wrote:
| The fact that someone has converted one to run on steam is very
| appropriate given that the single-power-source design was the
| norm for industry until the 20th century, and it's not hard to
| imagine in a steampunk universe a much scaled-up, metal version
| of this arm in a factory, powered by a lineshaft:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_shaft
| hedora wrote:
| I'm surprised these aren't still made!
|
| I wonder how far you could get in 2025 with cnc routers/lasers
| and 3d printers.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-20 23:00 UTC)