The first thing I noticed about the RoboQuad is that it is larger than I was expecting. I took some photo's of it with the RoboPet to give an idea of the size. Getting it out of the box was easier than I was expecting, it still wasn't easy, but at least the box wasn't hot glued together, so I didn't have to destroy the box to get it out.

Removing the RoboQuad's legs is easy, each leg is only held on by a single screw, The Torso on the other hand, is held together by a lot of screws (18 to be exact). There is a small notch that prevents the legs being put on backwards. The front and rear legs appear identical, but they are slightly different, the front legs are angled slightly differently. This is visible in the photo, you can see the black wedge where the legs meet the torso is larger on the front leg than the rear. Removing the legs is not necessary to open up the RoboQuad, but it doesn't hurt. Once the screws are removed the shell pops apart easily and the wiring for the neck and upper torso can be disconnected from the main board.

Unlike some of WowWees other offering, the plugs on the main board aren't held in with glue. Ironically, I had more trouble extracting the plugs from their sockets then I've ever had before, even without the hot glue. WowWee seems to have switched to a different design of plugs. The small IC on the top of the Main board will most likely be the motor driver chip. Surprisingly, there is no tilt sensor in the RoboQuad. All the headers on the Main board are helpfully labeled.

The leg motors are modular, That is, they are identical. I was surprised that there is no positional sensors on the legs other than a single switch. However, that single switch means the leg can be moved into 4 different positions, even if some of those are very close together. This is another example of WowWee making the most with the minimum of components. The neck motor is much smaller than the leg motors, it also has a pot sensor to determine position, which makes senses. In order to determine the location of a gap it "sees" and the size, it would need a certain amount of precision with regards to the rotation of the neck.

The RoboQuad's head can be opened up without needing to attack the rest of the body, and there is a fair amount of empty space inside the head. The circuitry, like the main board, is helpfully labeled. The circuitry in the head is pretty much all there to drive the 7 LED's in the head (6 visible, 1 IR).

The neck is, surprisingly, solid. Inside the neck is the motor and gear box for tilting the head up and down. Visible in the photo is the pot sensors to determines the angle the head is tilting at. Also visible is at the bottom of the neck is a spring, the bottom neck joint is spring loaded. Presumably, this is so that if the RoboQuad fall over (or off something) the spring will absorb the shock, rather than the neck snapping off.

I noticed several interesting things while exploring the inside of the RoboQuad. The first thing I noticed was this marking on the controllers circuit board, it reads "PROJECT: SPIDER_REMOTEV1". It has been said that the RoboQuad was originally called SpiderSapien, this was mostly dismissed after WowWee released the Spiderman themed RoboSapien (the SpiderSapien). This would appear to lend some credence to the RoboQuad being the original SpiderSapien.

The second interesting thing I noticed was this clear plastic piece in the head, and a matching notch in one of the RoboQuad's eyes. I had assumed that the clear protrusion on the top of the RoboQuad's head was it light sensor, I was wrong. The light sensor under the small hole located on his back. This clear plastic piece will catch IR signals from the remote, and pass them down to the IR Receiver in the eye. Allowing him to see remote signals, even when he isn't looking at the remote.

I discovered the final interesting thing while examining the RoboQuad's main board. There is a single unpopulated header on the main board, this is not all that uncommon with WowWee's products, they mostly are left over from things that didn't make it in to the final product, or that were used for testing. This one, however, is labeled "TRY_ME". I haven't tried it yet, but I am looking forward to finding out what it does.

You can see all the photo's I took in the RoboQuad Internals photo gallery.