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Turn your iPhone into a humanoid robot

Video from Japan shows how a hobbyist has turned his iPhone 3GS into a robot head and added a body.

Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
Tim Hornyak

When it's not enough to let your iPhone control your life, you can have it control a robot.

An enterprising tinkerer in Japan has turned an iPhone 3GS into a humanoid robot by wiring it to a mechanical body.

Meet "Robochan."


Check out the video. Robochan is perhaps disturbing, but undeniably cute. The anime face and leek-waving are nods to Hatsune Miku, a character created for Yamaha's Vocaloid singing synthesizer application. Hatsune is a virtual idol in Japan; one of her albums topped the Oricon music chart last month.

Robochan consists of a 3GS wired to a Kondo Kagaku KHR-2 HV kit robot through its doc connector. The 3GS serves as the controller for the humanoid body, a popular kit which retails for about $900 with much assembly required.

Robochan can speak, dance, wake you up at a preset time, learn motions taught by hand, and react when its screen is touched. Its creator has also wired the iPod touch to a robot, as seen here.

Via Pink Tentacle