BIG TRAK / bigtrak was a programmable electric vehicle created by Milton Bradley in 1979.[1]
It was a six-wheeled tank with a front-mounted blue photon beam headlamp, and a keypad on top. The toy could remember up to 16 commands which it then executed in sequence such as "go forward 5 lengths", "pause", "turn 15 minutes right (90 Degrees)", "fire phaser" and so on. There was a "repeat" instruction allowing simple loop to be performed, but the language was not Turing complete, lacking branching instructions; the Big Trak also lacked any sort of sensor input other than the wheel sensors.
There is now a small but dedicated Internet community who have reverse engineered the BIG TRAK and the Texas Instruments TMS1000 microcontroller inside it.
The US and GB/European versions were noticeably different. The US version was moulded in gray plastic and labelled "BIG TRAK" whereas the GB version was white and labelled "bigtrak" with a different keypad.
Bigtrak also included an optional trailer accessory. Once hooked to Bigtrak, this trailer could be programmed to dump its payload.
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In the Soviet Union, a clone was made under "Elektronika IM-11" designation. The early production version was named Lunokhod after the Lunokhod programme. It featured an obstruction sensor disguised as a plastic front bumper, which would stop the program when the toy got stuck. However, there was no provision for an accessory, and its motion sensor was based on a cheaper reed switch instead of an opto-isolator. A later version, named "Planetokhod," additionally featured a shootable rotor blade as an accessory, LED head and rear lamps, and the on/off switch was relocated to the rear side. A Soviet popular science journal Nauka i Zhizn published a detailed article on the IM-11.[2]
All programming to BigTrak was done through the keypad shown here. There were no LED displays or ways to display program instructions, beyond actually running the program, which was done by pressing "GO". Other function keys included:
In 2010 Zeon Ltd released a replica of the original toy.[3][4] The colour and graphic scheme are based on the U.K. version and all stickers have been redrawn as a direct copy of the original artwork.
A simple iPhone app, bigtrak iCalc[5] is available that emulates the original bigtrack sounds.
An updated digital-era remake is expected for 2012[6]. Baptized as bigtrak XTR (from eXra Technology Rover), it is designed to be synced with dedicated iPhone, iPad and Android control apps. It will also carry two accessory ports, for a wireless camera and a combat weapon, such as a missile launcher or an infrared gun.
Dubreq Ltd[7] under license from Zeon Ltd has released a desktop version of the Bigtrak toy called "Bigtrack Jr".
Bigtrak Jr is 190mm long and runs on 3 AA batteries. It has an "active" accessory port and planned accessories include a rocket launcher and a digital camera.