Orbotix
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WWDC Interview: Orbotix
Victor Agreda, Jr. (Editor-in-Chief, The Unofficial Apple Weblog) interviews Brian Smith of Orbotix Inc. at WWDC 2011. You may remember Orbotix from CES. Brian was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward. Orbotix is building a platform, they say, and I'm hopeful hobbyists will embrace it. The Orbotix demo robot, Sphero, is adorable. TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 2011 about the keynote announcements and how Apple's new technologies will help them and their customers. We'll bring you those videos here, MacTech.com and MacNews.com. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.
iPhone-controlled Sphero ball gets a chariot for roving FaceTime sessions, office races
A tiny robotic ball able to be controlled by a smartphone doesn't exactly need any more selling points, but Orbotix's Sphero now has an extra one nonetheless. It's been outfitted with a chariot that can be used for FaceTime sessions or low-level surveillance -- or chariot races around your office, naturally. Of course, this is strictly a DIY affair, but we're guessing this is one project you will actually want to do yourself once you see the video after the break. [Thanks, Ross]
Hands-on with Sphero at the CES 2011
Sphero is this year's AR.Drone here in Las Vegas. Last year, the Parrot AR.Drone turned heads with an iPhone-controlled quadricopter, and this year, Sphero is creating a little buzz as an iPhone-controlled, well, ball. That's right -- the Sphero is a ball that both glows colors and rolls around at your iPhone or iPad's command. A company named Orbotix is working on releasing the ball sometime this year for no more than $100, and earlier this week at CES' ShowStoppers event, we got a chance to roll and control the ball ourselves. What's the verdict? It's a little tough to control, but then again the AR.Drone was as well, and that sold all right when it was released late last year. Setting up the free, not-yet-released iPhone (or iPad, or Android) app for Sphero is simple, and once it's up and running, you just need to face the ball in the right direction by dragging a little icon around a round area on screen. When the ball's aligned in the direction you want it facing, you just press the screen, and the ball moves the way you drag it -- forward, backwards, left or right. You can also adjust the ball's speed and the screen's sensitivity, and you can dive into another menu that allows you to change the (completely cosmetic) color of the LED inside with a few RGB sliders. It's fun, though, since it's still a prototype, it's tough to make the ball do exactly what you want, and most of the time, you just have to settle for what it does anyway. The dev told us that they're opening the platform up to anyone to make games or create applications, and the team has been working with ideas like turning the ball into a car with augmented reality. Our suggestion: let a cat play with this thing. They'd love it.
Orbotix Sphero iOS-controlled toy ball hands-on
It's not even close to an AR.Drone, but the Orbotix Sphero should find a way to eat up your precious productivity when it hits shelves sometime "later this year." This 4.3-inch LED-lit sphere connects to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch via Bluetooth, and allows you to remotely control it or change its color... and that's about it. There are two different input modes -- one that uses the built in accelerometers and another joystick mode that utilizes a large virtual circular joystick on-screen. The few minutes we spent with the sphere were mildly entertaining, but the lack of cameras or other sensors makes it kind of pointless. Still, we could see young kids going wild for this and refusing to give you back your iPhone to take a call. Orbotix detailed a game dubbed "QuizTug" in which multiple players connect to the same Sphero and try to "score" while the other player completes a math problem or some other type of question -- an interesting idea for sure. Operation definitely took a little bit of getting used to, and we still didn't have it quite down pat after about five or ten minutes but we're sure with some practice we'd be shredding the half pipe like our demo dude was. The existence of an open API makes us optimistic for the future of this little guy, especially given the sub-$100 pricetag. Check it out in our hands-on gallery or in the video posted after the break, and let us know what you'd do with this thing in the comments. %Gallery-113160%
Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone
Don't have the airspace required for an AR.Drone? Gearing up for its CES 2011 debut, Sphero is a small, robotic toy ball made by Orbotix, and controlled remotely via Bluetooth and your smartphone's tilt sensor. A ball that moves by itself? Call us lazy (too lazy to roll a ball even), but we think this is a toy whose time has come. Sure, the whole thing is pretty straightforward, although we hope that once iPhone and Android developers get ahold of that open API we'll see plenty in the way of augmented reality gameplay: a maze or a racing game of some sort would make this thing quite coveted, in our opinion. Catch a video of the prototype in action after the break.
