Bic Trak

BIG TRAK / bigtrak is a programmable electric vehicle created by Milton Bradley in 1979.[1] The original Big Trak was a six-wheeled (two-wheel drive) 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 executes in sequence, such as "go forward 5 lengths", "pause", "turn 15 minutes right (90 Degrees)", "fire phaser" and so on. There is also a "repeat" instruction allowing simple loop to be performed, but the language is not Turing complete, lacking branching instructions; the Big Trak also lacks any sort of sensor input other than the wheel sensors.

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. [The US gray plastic version of BIG TRAK had a gray plastic trailer, too; the trailer would also hookup to the BIG TRAK and be programed to dump a payload. (Added because the first sentence did not make it clear which model had the option of the trailer accessory.)]

In 2010, BIG TRAK was relaunched in the form of a slightly modified replica (cosmetically very similar to the original European bigtrak), produced under licence by Zeon Ltd.

There is also a small but dedicated Internet community who have reverse engineered the BIG TRAK and the Texas Instruments TMS1000 microcontroller inside it.