Bubble Bot (1978) by Jerome Hamlin, Comro Inc., New York, NY. “It’s handy having spaghetti spoons for hands,” says ComRo’s Bubble Bot. Bubble Bot is a mobile tele-operated personal robot, able to ‘speak’ via a microphone. The lower photo shows builder Jerry Hamlin with Bubble Bot and Bumpy.
“Jerome Hamlin, an independent filmmaker and TV producer, progressed from building model aeroplanes to building robots. He made his first show robot, Bumpy, when he was hoping to get a job building robots for the movie The Empire Strikes Back. The producers of the movie didn't buy Bumpy, but Hamlin was hooked on robots. He built others such as Bubble Bot, a remote-controlled puppet that moves its lips, hands, and arms and wags its head. Soon Hamlin was in business building robot props for movies and TV. But he had ideas for some “real” self-controlled robots, too. Along with ComRo I, the first general purpose household robot, he produced a pet robot “dog” named Wires. Hamlin hopes that his newest household robot, the ComRo TOT, will be a big seller, but Wires has been discontinued. “I sold several through the Neiman-Marcus catalog,” he says, “but they weren’t cost effective. They went for $650 each, but they cost me more than $400 to build – not including labor! Of course, they’d be cheaper if they were mass produced.” ” – The Robots Are Here, Dr Alvin Silverstein and Virginia N Silverstein.
“He inherited a love of invention from his father, a rocket scientist who worked on Saturn V, among other projects. Hamlin earned a degree in philosophy from Yale, then invented an inline skate in 1967, and built a robotics business in the 1970s, eventually making a computer-controlled domestic robot – the world’s first – that was sold by luxury department store Neiman Marcus.” – Steam man meets dinofish, Muskoka Life, Feb 2012.
