Mark Tilden Robosapiens Inventor
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Monday, 29 May 2006 |
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Page 1 of 5  “The only difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys” said a wise person many decades ago – and little did they know about the 21st century addiction with gadgets and toys.
One man who has fueled this addiction, and at the same time helped bring uber-expensive technology to consumers has been the robotics rock star Mark Tilden. Mr Tilden, a real life rocket scientist, is the creator of hundreds (if not thousands) of robots, based on the simple principles of BEAM ( Biology, Eletronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics).
The essential principles of BEAM involve using simple electronics to create mechanical creatures. Unlike traditional robotics where huge amounts of time and energy go into programming complex artificial intelligence, BEAM relies on the concept of “nervous networks”, a concept patented by Mr Tilden. These robots rely on simple sensors like touch, light and heat detectors which feed into circuits that have configurable responses.
Mark Tilden, started his robotics career at the University of Waterloo and went on to develop robots at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was then recruited by WowWee Toys, a Hong Kong based toy manufacturer, where he has produced some of the world’s most popular robot toys, like the Bio-Bug, Robosapien and Robosapien V2, Roboraptor and Robopet lines.
Given that the Robosapiens have been on our essential Christmas gift list for the last two years, we thought we should touch base with him and find our more about the man and his toys. Over a period of a week between the Hong Kong and New York Toy Fairs, Mr Tilden took time to respond to dozens of questions, using his handy crackberry.
The interview covers Mr Tilden's insights on bot building, the current and upcoming releases of WowWee robots and has a fair share of gentle amusing remarks about "software types".
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