Built with military surplus parts by family friend Steve Schnetzler, this 3-foot-tall lean green delivery machine cruised to the front door with a bucketfull of candy. While some trick or treaters were speechless at first, Ignog wasn't.

"Take the candy if you dare," he told his young visitors.

Ries van Zoest credits neighbor Alex Dam, an engineer at GDE Systems, for Ignog's chattiness. Using a voice program, Dam typed in several phrases so the robot could converse with the trick-or-treaters.

"At first he (Ignog) was a little hard to grasp, but then they had lots of fun with him. Overall, I think he was considered 'neat' and 'cool'," Ries van Zoest said.

Schnetzler, an electrical engineer for Titan Corp., said he has been building robots since childhood. So last July, when the van Zoests indicated they wanted a robot that could hand out candy on Halloween, they didn't have to ask twice.

Although Ignog was assembled in Schnetzler's Valley Center garage, every Monday night the men got together at the van Zoests' house to strategize. "You should have heard them laughing over this," Leida van Zoest said.

Their high-tech hijinks included one camera hidden outside in the bushes to watch for trick-or treaters as they approached the house, and another one located indours to guide Ignog to the front door.

Deciding to go all out with special effects, the trio also installed a speaker and wires to create the sound of footsteps, added spooky background music, and used a microfiche reader to make a rovering eye. The eye was placed in the living room window to follow the trick-or-treaters as they came up the sidewalk.

According to Ries van Zoest, an engineer at Biomagnetic Technologies, just about everything was created and controlled through a computer set up in his living room. A screen hid the three adults from view.

Halloween is a relatively new experience for the van Zoests. Until moving to Rancho Bernardo from Holland six years ago, they never celebrated the holiday. Now, however, they've truly gotten into the spirit of things, and, considering what a hit Ignog was this year, Ries van Zoest predicts they'll come up with something different, but equally amusing next Halloween.

"The big payoff for us is that three grown men could be kids again for a little while," he said.