The first step toward befriending a robot is getting it to do something more interesting than beep. Jabberbot adds a little personality to the machinery, responding to commands, moving around under remote control, and supplying enough chatter and sound effects to make an ordinary afternoon feel borderline futuristic.

Kids can send it forward, backward, left, or right, change its voice, and trigger different sounds, or program a sequence of movements and watch it carry them out. The result sits somewhere between remote-control toy and mechanical sidekick, with enough interaction to keep play from becoming a simple exercise in steering.

It’s the sort of robot that invites a little experimentation. Give it a route, give it a voice, and see what sort of character emerges once the controls are in younger hands.