Tomy Ominbot 2000 Restored with Raspberry Pi

As Matt Vella points out, 1980s pop culture prominently featured the integration of robots with humans — Star Wars, Short Circuit, Transformers, the list goes on. Naturally there were numerous attempts to make this robotic future into the robotic now, or at least to create toys that were a reasonable facsimile of the R2D2/Johnny 5s (is alive) portrayed in the movies.

One interesting take on this robotic future was the Tomy Ominbot 2000, which was really more of an RC car/cassette player/walkie-talkie/alarm clock than what one might think of as a true robot. Nonetheless, it’s a rather iconic design, and after getting ahold of one in an “as-is, non-working” state, Vella and crew got to work turning it into something even better than the original — the Omnibot MAIV (Modernized with AI and Viam) — using a Raspberry Pi 4B and the Viam robotics/smart machines platform.

The steps in this build are outlined in some detail in Vella's write-up, though if you try something similar yourself the details will certainly vary. The crux of the operation is that the Raspberry Pi was inserted into the bot as the central controller, which is then able to command the driving DC motors in a standard differential/tank steering configuration via an L298N motor driver board.

The head has a DC motor for rotation, which is also controlled by the Pi and another L298. The stock eyes are replaced with a pair of LEDs, giving the robot a bit more personality with a presumably lower current draw than the stock bulbs. A webcam could be added for ML/remote control purposes, and the right arm — which at some point was powered, but not restored/enhanced in this project — could also be made to work.

While it might seem like a shame to modify this type of vintage hardware, it was already in a non-functional state. With newer hardware and software methodologies, older hardware like this can potentially be made to more closely mimic its ideal as a robotic companion/helper!