I got an i-Que Personal Robot in late 2007. This robot is touted as "The world's smartest Robot". It has the Miriam-Webster Student Dictionary of 70,000 words programmed into it, as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica. It roams about on it's own, discover things, ask questions, make comments, and find it's charging dock to charge itself some of the time. Other features include a calculator, alarm clock, memo and reminder system. It also has limited speech recognition. You can communicate with it and control it from a Blackberry-type device that transmits around 30 feet from the robot. This robot is one of the more advanced toys out there and it's voice is more articulated which is surprising since this robot does not use pre-recorded sound files, but actually has a text-to-speech engine built in. You can also get cartridges such as Space, Human Anatomy and Achievement and U.S. History which add more knowledge to his database, as well as new trivia games on those topics.

I first activated my i-Que at 7:19 pm on December 19, 2007. At first, he didn't power up when the On/Off/Sleep button was moved to "On". So I turned it off and to on a couple times. Maybe the button sticks a bit or didn't quite make contact on that pole in the switch, but once I did that, it all worked out ok. Blue lights came on in the area around his microphones first.

Sometimes he does take a little time to respond. He went through his factory start-up routine at first activation. When done, he didn't say he was going into his programming mode. But he may have become confused as he was moving at the same time and going OFF the black table I had him set up on. This type of surface was a bit of a problem for him at times. He works on infrared for pretty much everything, including sensors. The communicator uses RF radio frequency. The infrared needs something reflective and/or not dark for it to pick up things in order to work.

He's cute, humorous, and rather fun. :) Though more limited than I first anticipated. Even in text chat mode, you are limited to some abbreviations. He said he met the fridge, and then later said that the fridge said I had some leftovers that are way past it's prime (I don't really, though).

He does bump into things and his track system will make nasty click noises trying to continue. This happens when his bump sensors and IR can't see an object as it's too high up but then there's a lot of dark space under it. You can go into Drive mode and move him out or just pick him up and move him. He is a good sized robot. But not too heavy to grab in an emergency.

His battery life lasted about an hour and a half (7:32 pm - around 9 pm). When he wanted to recharge at first I didn't know what was going on because I wasn't able to see his face from where I was standing. He was going towards an inflatable chair and started pushing it. I moved it aside and he made for the Christmas Tree. I'm like don't you dare go after my tree! Well, the charging dock is in that direction too. He found it, but took his sweet time adjusting into the position and then when he docked it wasn't straight on, but more on a like 20 deg. angle or something. But at least he did find it.

I have found that if you turn him off, he loses all time and date functions. If you put his underside switch to Sleep mode and put him on the charger, the time and date might not always be remembered. In fact, this is even true if you leave the robot's underside switch in the On position even on the charger. He will not charge if the underside switch is in the Off position.

When he doesn't understand something he'll half chuckle, which is kind of cute and he'll say he doesn't understand, like when you are looking things up or something. If he can't find the item in his databanks he'll say it's not in his databanks. There's only History, Biography, and Animals in the Encyclopedia. But he does seem to know a bit of sports. I played a numbers trivia game with him and the questions ranged from easy to hard. Some of the choices he'd give were rather humorous.

He is a joy to play around with. There's some Easter Eggs to be discovered, such as special words to type in the text device. The LOSTSPACE one makes him say a little skit in a monotone robot voice like the robot from Lost In Space. He ends saying that those 60s robot voices were lame.

This little robot is a great learning tool and very interactive. He'll ask questions, ask you to rate things on a scale of 1 to 5, and try to remember your favorite TV shows. Sometimes he'll even ask you about your family or pets. i-Que is quiet for a little bit when he's first turned on but then as minutes pass, he will become more active, asking questions and roaming around the room. He's definitely an amusing robot.