Back in the 1980s we had a little game system here in the States called the NES. In Japan, that system was called the Famicom. It looked mighty different, but played most of the same games. And while the Famicom has long-since been discontinued, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get the occasional hack done to it just like the NES. Here, we have a Famicom, hacked to control a robot.
Ninagawa Izumi’s robot is controlled by the classic red and gold Famicom gamepad. While I’m not sure of all of the steps in the hack, it involved the use of a Bluetooth dongle, a Wii controller, an NES/SNES to Wii adapter, a PS to Wii adapter and a Bluetooth-to-serial adapter. All of this was put together to control a cute little ROBO-XERO humanoid robot with some googly eyeballs. Here, check it out in action:
Funny thing is, this isn’t the only controller that he’s operated his robot with…
Sweet, eh? I wish Nintendo would come out with their own line of robots operated by game controller. Heck, they could even skip the Famicom, and go straight for the Wii U controller. It would be cool if you could pilot a Nintendobot using motion control and get a ‘bots-eye view using the screen. I bet they’d sell at least a few more Wii Us if they started offering Wii U robots to go with. And yes, I know it wouldn’t be the first time Nintendo connected a robot to a console.
[via Tiny Cartridge]
