Can anyone help out? I am looking for a co-worker and thought I could count on you all.

Which side of the metro?

Just south of downtown MPLS.

I'm thinking hobby shops. Hacking stuff from Ax-man into robots is a bit tough for a 10-yo, but there are usually some pretty spiffy kits at hobby shops that can be fun. Tamiya in particular makes kits which are all-in-one gear boxes, worm drives, etc, which can be much more forgiving to work with.

The one I've been to (I forget the name) was on France, south of 62 a ways. Very cool.

It's on Penn: http://www.hubhobby.com/

I've seen the Tamiya robot kits there.

That's the place. I was quite impressed. I believe there are other Hub Hobby shops around town.

I also mentioned AEI at 100 and 55 for general electronics, and of course Ax-man. But I think the Tamiya kits are probably your best bet for the mechanics.

There's one in Little Canada too.

http://www.hubhobbycenter.com/

what's wrong with lego then?

Imagine you're 10, you want to build a robot, and somebody gives you Lego.
Not bad, OK; but it's not what you envisioned, is it?

seriously have you not looked at mindstorms? people have built self balancing 2 wheel robots with the current stuff, and back in 7th grade i built a robotic arm driven by an apple II.

it's REALLY easy to put the parts together, you're not dealing with a hot soldering iron, or metal saws, and you've got more computing power than sent men to the moon. what more do you need? v2.0 can work on it when you're not there to supervise stuff, and after they get the basics down they can start looking at the circuit creation of doign it themselves.

are you talking robotics, or a robot model? if tis' just a model, get a nice gundam plastic they're hundreds of pieces of awesome model building, and you *can* make them move if you're good.