Unfortunately, R.O.B. might've had good intentions - he was designed to be a second player for friendless youths - but only worked with two games; Gyromite and Stack-Up. Aren't you supposed to learn from your mistakes, Nintendo?
Of course, R.O.B. wasn't the only commercially available "robot" in the robot-obsessed 1980s. Here are ten more.
Topo, designed by Androbot Inc., did neither of these things. Indeed, Topo didn't do much of anything at all - it just trundled wherever you told it to trundle, via an Apple II program, and an infra-red transmitter. A later version featured a text-to-speech function, so that you could get Topo to say stuff like "I'm trundling over here" and "I'm not a pervert".
It featured a colour TV screen in its chest (videos could be played via a concealed VCR slot), and its hands could hold a tray of drinks. Also, according to Sega's literature, "danger prevention sensors make him completely safe to operate".
That doesn't explain whether Sega Chan could detect danger coming his way, or sensed when he was going to behave dangerously around others. Either way, it rather flagged the possibility of the robot's danger sensors failing, and it going on some sort of alarming rampage, knocking over stalls, and feeling up businessmen.
I'd suggest that the first thing that you want from a robot is that it works, so it's good to know that the RB5X was pushing this angle, should there be any doubt.
An optional robotic arm was capable of picking up and carrying objects, providing they didn't weigh more than "16 ounces". No trays of drinks for RB5X, then.
"You can call him Lethal," more like.
Essentially an educational toy, which worked via an 8-track cassette that was inserted into its abdomen, 2-XL/Brainy would ask questions and tell jokes.
QUESTION: What is the most dangerous toy of all time?
ANSWER: 2-XL!!!
Yes... but what could it actually do?! Based upon the evidence above, it was a sort of high-tech postbox/leviathan's buttplug.