Real Robots

Real Robots was the name of a fortnightly partwork magazine by Eaglemoss Publications, established in May, 2001.Developed in partnership with Reading University, it allowed the reader to build a robot, "Cybot", and later a companion robot, "Tom". This series, which was released in eight countries, is now discontinued.

Construction phases

There were 96 issues of the magazine, divided into 5 phases:

Praise

Especially during Phase 1, the magazine was very popular, as the reader quickly built a working robot, with new features added at a fast pace. The magazine was generally considered interesting and educational. As such, a large and active community built up around the magazine, including a couple of notably active websites, Realcybot.com(not online now), and Cybotbuilder.com. The latter was renamed www.robotbuilder.co.uk and remains active and online.

Criticisms

At £3.99 per issue many subscribers complained that the building went at a slow pace, making it expensive (fewer parts per issue of the magazine). This was mainly caused by a continuous evolution of features of the project, meaning that there was no rigid timetable. A prime example of this was in Phase 2 - with 5 more issues than Phase 1, the main additions to the series were a remote control, contrary to the goal of building an autonomous robot, and a docking station which was largely unnecessary, and the "Team Cybot" customisation which was very unpopular and required a rebuild of significant parts of the robot.

See also

External links

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