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Re:The forgotten 80s home robot trend by agumonkey on Friday May 25, 2018 @11:55AM (#17154925)
oh, reminds me that the very first programming class per se we ever got as kids was on one of these :

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bigtrack+programmable+rover&atb=v5...

basically real life LOGO. I say "per se" because LOGO trying to not feel like programming, teacher didn't say the word IIRC.

Re:The forgotten 80s home robot trend by madengr on Friday May 25, 2018 @01:17PM (#17155832)
Always wanted one as a kid. I FINALLY got one for my 43'rd birthday. They came out with them again, but no trailer accessory.

http://www.bigtrakxtr.co.uk/

Re:The forgotten 80s home robot trend by hoffbrau99 on Friday May 25, 2018 @01:43PM (#17156158)
My love for programming originated with Big Trak, LOGO on the Apple ][, and of course the C64
Re:The forgotten 80s home robot trend by jackhack on Friday May 25, 2018 @01:56PM (#17156274)
The BigTrak was my first exposure to programming, as well. I was so distressed when my family moved and it was lost/discarded. I used to work out path programs for it to drive from my bedroom, down the hall to my brother's room, and back, ferrying baseball cards or comic books or such.

For those who aren't aware, BigTrak was an electronic toy from the late 1970s, a treaded tank-like toy car with a membrane keyboard on top. The user could program in a path as a series of steps (forward, forward, right turn, forward, make sound, stop.) and I think it had a gripper claw on the front. (memory is a fleeting thing).

A google search shows I was close to accurate (no claw, though): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak

Re:The forgotten 80s home robot trend by hoffbrau99 on Friday May 25, 2018 @02:02PM (#17156331)
It had a trailer which could be commanded to dump the objects it was carrying