Actual Robot with Nokia N900 as a head.

This bag of awesome was originally produced early last year, according to the forum date, but it just made its way to TMO today.

Back when the N900 was new, it was the end all and be all of a hackable phones. Every day it would surprise you with the creativity of its users. Years after we would still be reporting again and again (such as the brain scanner) about the N900. This is one of the many reasons why we and many of its users look back so fondly on the N900. Maemo 5 was the saviour of Nokia. Maemo 5 showed the world Nokia could do software and pretty dang well despite the embarrassing, absolutely embarrassing equivalent we saw at the time on Symbian S60 handsets.

There have been many N900 robots, but those were CGI promos. This is an actual robot. I don’t recall if I posted about this so this must be new to me. If I did, it’s still worth talking about again.

Features:

http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6891

Bioloid Premium, Type A
– 20 DOF (2 additional servos for the head)
– Head and control unit using Nokia N900 (running Maemo)
– Second LiPo
– External power adapter plug
– Button to switch between battery and power adapter mode

The N900 was already ground breaking in 2009. I wish Nokia just rolled out Maemo 5 devices. None of Nokia’s current browser offerings stack up to MicroB on N900. I’d say, the N900’s multitasking view is still far superior compared to anything. It just needed some tweaking to make it more consumer friendly in certain aspects. Some disagree and say it needed more work. Well, perhaps. But much less work than fixing Symbian. With N900, with Maemo 5, Nokia would have had solid concrete foundations and not sinking sand.

With N900 we really had Amazing everyday, but produced by users who could just do whatever they wanted to do. The main problem was getting apps. When it got apps, they looked stunning. They were ‘iPhone quality’ aka, not that crap we saw on S60 5th – mostly because they were often iPhone ports.

Imagine it – 2010

• Slimmer N900 successor
• Updated hardware for 2010 standards
• Touch only N900 successor
• Revamped MicroB
• N900 parallax panoramic desktop
• Multitouch everywhere
• Multitask button, home/menu, desktop touch buttons
• USB port that didn’t break if you looked at it wrong.
• 12MP camera with xenon.

Source: robosavvy.com via TMO

Cheers Maurice for the tip!

Category: Maemo, MeeGo, Nokia