Reimagining legacy robotics. Your questions, answered.

These two robots are the start of a bigger idea. A large amount of legacy robotic hardware still works mechanically but was built long before modern AI. Revenant Robotics asks whether that hardware can be modernized for an AI-enabled age instead of being thrown away.

ROBIE Sr. and RSAP are the proof of concept, and both were built in under a year. The method is preserve, extend, bound: preserve what makes the original system what it is, extend it with modern conversation, memory and perception, and bound it with clear limits on what it can do.

A new robot would be a blank slate. These two already had personalities and a following. The goal is to take on more ambitious projects.

The parts list is not a secret. A small computer, a microphone and an AI service is what most people would guess. What is harder to copy is how it all fits together: the software, the way memory and behaviour are designed, the safety logic, and the craft of fitting modern capability into a vintage robot without losing its character.

Revenant Robotics licenses its software to owners and does not sell it. See the notices in each manual for the terms.

By design, none of it comes to Revenant Robotics. Conversations, photos and recordings stay on the robot, go to your own email address, or go to your own AI account: OpenAI for ROBIE Sr. and xAI’s Grok for RSAP.

Those providers can keep an archive of conversations under their own terms and privacy policies, so owners should read them. Revenant Robotics only has access to anything if an owner chooses to give it, for example for support.

The robots are not toys, and Revenant Robotics does not recommend leaving them unsupervised with small children. There are two kinds of safety to think about.

Physical. In Walkabout, ROBIE Sr. roams a room on its own, a bit like a robot vacuum, and uses its collision sensors to change direction. The sensors stay on throughout Walkabout, but they will not catch everything, such as a drop-off or a thin object. Walkabout is supervised, you can say STOP at any time, and there is a physical power control to keep within reach.

Conversational. The robots talk, and conversations with an AI are unpredictable. A reply can be unexpected, inaccurate or upsetting, and for some people it could be triggering. They are not a substitute for professional medical, mental health or crisis support, and Revenant Robotics does not present them as companions for anyone vulnerable or for children left alone with them.

It will sometimes be wrong. The robots use AI services, and Revenant Robotics tells owners not to rely on them for medical, legal, financial or safety decisions. What a robot says is generated by the AI service and is not advice from Revenant Robotics.

What Revenant Robotics controls is the design around it: what the robot is allowed to do, what it remembers, and the limits on physical action. If a reply is inappropriate, stop the conversation or switch the robot off.

Partly. Movement, gestures and the iPhone Remote work over your local network. Conversation depends on the AI service, so it needs an internet connection, and so do features such as weather.

With the internet down, you would have a robot you can drive and operate, but not one you can talk to.

Revenant Robotics can say what has been tested and what has not. In recorded live tests, a preference an owner withdrew stayed withdrawn on ROBIE Sr. after a restart. On RSAP, an approved correction was stored, retrieved and withdrawn while unrelated facts were left alone.

Yes, there is a real dependency. The conversation comes from those services, so a change in their terms, pricing or availability would affect it. Each robot uses one provider, and the provider cannot be changed by the owner.

Movement, gestures and the iPhone Remote are separate from the AI service. The robot’s character, memory design and safety logic are what Revenant Robotics builds, and those stay with the company. Revenant Robotics treats the provider dependency as a risk to manage.

No. They did not make or endorse these projects, and Revenant Robotics is not affiliated with either company.

The work is a conversion service on robots that customers already own. RSAP is built on a WowWee RoboSapien X, and ROBIE Sr. on a 1980s RadioShack robot. The original names are used only to describe the robots, and all trademarks belong to their owners.

Revenant Robotics is not taking orders or quoting prices yet. A conversion would be a service on a robot you already own, not a new robot.

To be told when it is ready, get in touch through revenantrobotics.com.