The Robsaopien V2 is the 2nd generation bigger brother Robosapien which stands at about 2 feet tall and has many more features than the original.
Its hard to come across used ones in thrift stores and if you find one of these or the more common Roboraptor or Roboreptile few of them will have the remote control.
The Robosapien V2 unfortunately suffered from poor quality wiring in many cases and due to the age they will often not work and upon disassembly its often the case that the insulation falls off on just about every single wire which could cause a short or worse. In my several RV2’s it was that problem even though they did perform the demo fine but upon dissestion i noticed rotten wires and cracked hip joints due to the very heavy weight of the unit and the many falls that it probably took over its years.
But anyhow if you get one used without a remote you can test the basics by putting in the many batteries (6D cell in the feet and 4 more aaa in the feet).
You turn it on and it will perform a basic few moves of its waist and arms and say a few words and perhaps make its well known “gas/fart” sound.
The creator of the RV2 at Wowwee Mark Tilden was always a good humored robotocist and as is said in the industry put a little of himself into the look and personality of the RSV2.
Now if you are lucky enough to have a remote control you can make it move around and wave its arms and respond to your hand in front of it or pick up its bowling ball and throw it at the pins.
It has various sensors but no edge detector so do not put it on a table or it will fall right off and probably not recover.
To get it to do the demo or dance routine simply press the D for demo key.
The stick is used for walking and the R stick is used for the head and upper body.
Z is used to let it go free Roam so it can move about autonomously.
You can press the laser targeting button and then the robot will go toward that mark on the floor.
Now in the manual there is a quite complex chart of all the key combinations you can press to make the robot do things. There must be 100 ways to push buttons or more.
This skill in pressing the left or right joystick with various other buttons and shift keys is a good skill to have in the industrial and military robot business.
Many skilled game players are able to transfer their skills into the business environment when it comes to operating drones and remote unmanned robotic vehicles.
It is an hand-eye coordination that not everybody is good at.
Players in a relatively new field of drone racing can make huge cash prizes if they can move their drones through winding courses filled with obstacles and other things meant to slow down the racers.
To make it walk you press the L left stick and then the arrow to move it forward and then press it again to make it go slower. You can press the Y key to change to one of 4 different walking gaits or styles.
It can walk and use its sensors to avoid obstacles or it can go into bulldozer mode where it will keep walking right into or through any obstacles.
If you put it in the free roam mode you can stop it by either putting your hand in front of its face to activiate the flinch response or by touching his back foot sensor.
You can turn on its color camera vision by putting your hand in front of its face and covering its sensors which is called the flinch response.
It can then recognize the three primary colors or the skin of a hand.
There are several ways that you can program the robosapien to do certain moves.
There is the main positional mode with a maximum of 12 moves that can be store and there is controller programming mode.
You can do scripts for the controller mode for 3 categories: main, vision and sound.
You can then get fancier and create subroutines of these 3 categories and make your program longer.
RSV2 can be put into guard mode overnight so that it will wake up if the sensors detect movement or sound and will perform whatever program it was stored with and move around or make noise.
It can interact if you put another RSV2 in front of it or a Roboraptor or Robopet.
Now some toy hackers have made the RSV2 work with an arduino board and controlled it from a remote cellphone app.