UBTech, the company that’s in the business of making commercial as well as toy robots, has a new addition to its family of robotic toys. You may remember UBTech for the strangely adorable Stormtrooper robot which, btw, is discounted heavily right down at just $140 a pop (that was originally $229.99). Anyways, the new addition is an officially licensed Marvel superhero, Iron Man, which couldn’t be more fitting to the high-tech nature of the character.
Aesthetically, it is the Iron Man MK50 suit as you have come to expect, albeit one that is a tad cuter. With UBTech Iron Man MK50, you are granted control over robotic toy’s motors, lights and sounds using a mobile device and have a blast (literally but virtually) with augmented reality missions. That being said, it looks like a tablet would be a more suitable device as it will allow you to see things in larger perspective.
Like the armored superhero suit, it has lighted arc reactor and repulsors, and a super cool, flip-up face mask that opens to reveal a LCD that displays with a digital face of Tony Stark (not Robert Downing Jr., though). You can also choose to upload your face to the LCD display and record audio phrases which will playback when, for example, non-authorized person tries to access your high-tech “weaponry” when you are away.
It has IR sensor that prevents it from falling to its death from places like a table, steps and whatnot. I think the most interesting part is, it is programmable and letting you do so in a simplest possible way, and that’s drag-and-drop using Block-based programming. With the ability to program, you can make UBTech Iron Man MK50 execute one-of-a-kind moves with your own scripted sequences without touching a line of code.
Oddly, though, it lacks of the voice command features found on the First Order Stormtrooper. It will be dope if it supports voice commands. Also, if it had moving flaps like the in the movies’, it will will be even more dope. Just saying…
While it is not cheap, commanding a $289 price tag, it is the closest anyone can get to being an Iron Man without having to drop $35,000 for an officially licensed life-size, motorized (but not wearable) Iron Man Mark XLIII, or the $4,000 non-official wearable Iron Man Mark VII replica costume set. It may also not be movie-accurate in terms of proportion, but dollar-for-dollar, it is probably better than movie-accurate action figures destined for the display cabinet from you know who.
Images: UBTech.
Source: Technabob.
