While waiting for Dr. Kormushev’s response, let’s study our potential opponent. Above is a picture of said archer. The good news is he has the body of a 3 and a half year old baby. The bad news is that he’s iCub, an open source robot, so there’s more of him out there. Kinda like little versions of the ones in I, Robot. Are they planning to make a mediocre movie? They must be stopped. But first we have to get our hands on ARCHER (Augmented Reward Chained Regression), the learning algorithm that enabled the iCub to learn to hit bulls eyes in the first place. After every trial, the iCub sees where his arrow hit and consequently adjusts his aim for the next try. So it’s just like what you and I would do under the same circumstances, except that with the iCub, each iteration is a guaranteed improvement, whereas my aim only gets worse and worse. By the 5th try I’ll probably have shot myself in the back.

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Members of the resistance, you guys go ahead and read more about the archer iCub at Dr. Kormushev’s website, ’cause you know, I still have stuff to do. In any case if we fail to free the scientists right now, we’ll still have another opportunity, because they are scheduled to present their research at the Humanoids 2010 conference this December. Let’s meet there and be on the lookout for a baby with a Native American headdress. I hope that by then he hasn’t learned any new skills, like vaporizing our eyes with lasers. In the first try.

What’s kind of wacky about the weapon is that they’ve actually covered up the tip of the “arrow” with a dumb looking plastic ball, taking all the fun out of shooting an arrow through your TV screen. On the other hand, the crossbow does feature a laser sight which should do a fine job reflecting off your display and blinding you.

Priced at about $28, the plastic crossbow is more expensive than the Zapper and Link bundle, making it pretty impractical since that’s the only Wii game I can think of that has a crossbow as its primary weapon.

If you’re still convinced that just have to have this, head on over to DealExtreme to get your hands on one.

While I wouldn’t necessarily let the pint-sized robot shoot an apple off of my head, I’m still pretty impressed by the motion capabilities of the little guy.

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For those of you unfamiliar with Tomy’s i-SOBOT, the 6.5-inch tall robot offers an amazing range of movements, with over 200 pre-programmed moves, plus the ability to string them together into complex choreography. Plus, the i-SOBOT doesn’t just walk the walk, he talks the talk, with over 200 words and phrases built in as well.

You can find Tomy’s i-SOBOT over on Amazon for around $200.