It’s that flop-sweat time of year: late in the Christmas shopping season—and really late in the Hanukkah shopping season—so you can’t rely on shopping sites to ship your gifts in time. Looks like you’ll have to actually go outside. Luckily, since you live in the shopping capital of the world (you do, right?), it shouldn’t be too hard to find something for your favorite poindexter. With GONY’s last-minute shopping guide, you’ll be back home playing Scrabulous and sipping store-brand egg nog in no time.

Robot Village
252 West 81st St., Manhattan

As noted at the end of Thursday’s post, robots need no introduction, so irrefutable is their stature in the Pantheon of Awesomeness. Of all the post-millennial wonders we imagined back in the 20th century, robots come the closest to delivering on their promise. Everything else falls way short: Cars don’t fly or drive themselves, we eat meals in non-capsule form, and summer holidays on the moon remain impractical.

But at Robot Village, the future manages to be futuristic for once. In a one-room shop below the curb on West 81st Street, robots crawl, grab, explore, talk, interact—everything that robots were supposed to do. That includes “fight with other robots,” a staple robot fantasy that you can live out at a “Battle Zone” that serves as the store’s centerpiece. (However, since the vast majority of the robots haven’t suffered a freak short-circuit that locks them in “kill mode,” most are pretty peaceful.)

Watching a robot go is fun, but building your own robot and then watching it go is more fun. So Robot Village is rife with kits—in fact, do-it-yourself packages outnumber the pre-made robots for sale. Nathan, part of the Robot Village crew, said that younger customers respond to the building experience in a way they might not to more traditional toys. “When I was little, all I cared about was whether He-Man’s shoulder moved up and down,” he said, mimicking a stiff action figure. “But now, kids want to know more about the details of what’s going on inside.”

While children’s tastes are indeed growing more sophisticated, I was pleased to find that Robot Village doesn’t limit itself to the training-wheels set. Nathan and store owner David Greenbaum showed me kits along the skill continuum, from a snap-together gorilla to the programmable, extensible Boe-Bot. If you’re afraid you’ll botch your bot (say, by creating a freak short circuit that locks it in kill mode) there are bot-building stations where the staff will help you along. You can make a reservation or attend one of the scheduled workshops.

At each of the other stores I’ve reviewed this week, there came a time where I was ready to go; I’d seen everything. At Robot Village, despite the fact that it’s the smallest physical space in the X-travaganza, I always felt there was more to explore.

Greenbaum sensed this. At one point I signaled that I needed to wrap up my visit to catch a flight. He nodded and flicked on another robot (the RS Media) for us to play with. When he finished with one robot, he looked around and muttered, “What else, what else…?” until he settled on another Robot Village resident I needed to meet. This went on for another half hour, and how could I say no? I was like a kid in a candy store—or, more accurately, like a 26-year-old nerd in a robot store.

Gift Suggestions

Here are the obligatory suggestions, because people like to look at pictures of shiny gadgets. Your best option is to go to the store (or call) and tell the extremely knowledgeable staff who you’re shopping for. They’ll make a better recommendation than I can.¹

Also, I’ve chosen to highlight some kits you might not find at Toys ’R’ Us. Robot Village also carries ready-made robots, like the i-SOBOT and Pleo. Yes, you can get these at the big-box toy stores (at similar prices), but even if you put aside the whole support-local-independent-business angle, wouldn’t you rather buy a robot from somebody who can tell you how it works?

Revell VEXplorer, $199. Greenbaum was showing me the features of a robotic arm when he yelled to Nathan, “Can it pick up a soda can?”

“No, only an empty one,” Nathan said. Great disappointment.

“The VEXplorer can pick up a full can,” Nathan said. Great joy.

Later that day, I was reading a Robot magazine review of the VEXplorer kit by Grant Imahara of MythBusters fame.² Imahara wrote, “We’re talking about a custom-designed grasper that can pick up a can of soda—a full can of soda.” (Emphasis original.) So apparently, there are two kinds of robots: those that can pick up a full can of soda, and those that cannot. The VEXplorer is one of the former. It has a wireless color spycam to boot.

CIC Hexapod Monster, $26. Most of the kits in the store don’t require soldering skills, but a few do, and this CIC line is quite affordable. If your friend knows how to solder, here’s a cheap gift to hone her skills. If she doesn’t know how to solder, here’s a cheap way to learn. Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

“It is moving by 6 legs with 2 gear motors to control its moving and turning,” says the box copy. So I wouldn’t expect the instructions inside to be Hemingway-esque.

Parallax Boe-Bot Robot Kit, $159. An intermediate kit that includes infrared sensors (so your bot can avoid obstacles), photoresistors (so your bot sleeps when it’s dark), and other goodies. You can replace the wheels with legs to create the crawler bot depicted at the top of this article. Best of all, the robot’s development board connects to a computer by serial or USB, so you can program it with BASIC to do your bidding. Here’s a sample program:

10 DESTROY
20 GOTO 10
END

---

1. The staff seem hard to stump. A frazzled shopper came in while I was looking around, asking for a gift for a 7-year-old. Added degree of difficulty: The child was autistic. Unfazed, Greenbaum rattled off some suggestions right away. As it happens, a few weeks earlier they'd worked with an autistic child that age at the bot-building stations. Apparently they met with success, as Greenbaum told me that in his experience, autistic people had a special talent for the bot kits. (Return to text)

2. Grant's the one who's always building robots. Naturally. (Return to text)