They got $50m in funding from venture capital firms, which should keep them going for a while. They are a private company so they probably won't release any sales data. I think they must have gotten linked up with Apple through one of Apple's ex-employees. Allison Johnson was an Apple VP of worldwide marketing and went on to co-found a marketing agency where Anki was a client:
It's all about who you know. To make back the $50m investment, assuming a margin of 50% they just have to sell about 1m units at $100. They could manage this ok. Anki and Sphero could even team up to have a circuit racing mod where two Spheros with a magnetic cap on top connecting them act like a motorbike. Add some cool illumination to the spheres and it'll keep someone entertained.
Being able to develop for a robot itself is reason enough to want these. For young people robots can take the "boring" out of programming.
I don't know about AI as I'm not sure about the computational performance of the devices. This is however why I'd love to see Apple get deeper into education and robotics as they have the low cost integrated circuit technology to put a lot of computational performance into devices like this. Further I'd expect Apple shortly to start introducing technology in their SoC to aid AI's. AI accelerators if you will. I'm actually hoping that much of Apples recent "car related hires" are actually hires in part focused on robotics.
If there's a real-time programmable SDK on the iPad, that would be quite fun for kids to use. Just being able to enter a line of code in Swift (or whatever language) to say BB8.move(10,1) and it would turn 10 degrees right and move 1 meter. Then they start doing patterns. The AI could just be like path finding so if it was in a maze, it could detect when it hits a wall and then use that to map out the maze and figure out a way out of it. They can also do path-finding exercises like find the shortest route out of the maze. The robot can be programmed with a limiter by a teacher that only allows it to move the shortest possible path and it would never reach the exit unless the path search was programmed properly to take the shortest way out.
These kind of things can also be used to build Rube Goldberg style setups and they can be used as programmable wheels for vehicles so they could do vehicle manoeuvring algorithms for automated parking perhaps combined with 3D sensors.
I kind of thought that SW was all downhill after the first one (which was admittedly, radical). Can't get too excited about this impending release.
Maybe I am a romantic, but I prefer things more in the Captain America tradition.
The Avengers movies are quite popular but it's just action with them and some of them don't even need to be part of the team. What is Hawkeye there for? Ohhh each of the couple of arrows that you took a minute to fire helped save the day. Black Widow doesn't do much either of course but I can think of a couple of reasons to keep her in the team. I think Captain America is too dependent on the shield, once it gets taken away from him, he's just a normal guy.
There's too many heroes involved in the Avengers and neither those movies nor the Captain America movies on their own have much of a deep backstory. It's always something about some invasion or creature and then just action sequences with each of the heroes. They are entertaining to watch but forgettable. If you were to ask someone in 30 years what the plot for Captain America the Winter Soldier was, they wouldn't have a clue, even a year after release. But people still know all the details of Star Wars over 30 years later.
I don't think there's much to be excited about in the new ones because the main story has been told, they're not going to introduce a paternity test to find out Vader wasn't in fact Luke's father after all. It's similar to the idea of doing Back to the Future 4. The originals had closure. They're even switching director for Star Wars 8 so they might find it hard to keep them consistent. Star Wars is a universe though and there are more stories and characters to explore.
The alternative is to just let the franchise stay as it is and it would eventually be forgotten about. It'll at least answer the question of whether a decent Star Wars movie can be made after the original trilogy. Episode 3 wasn't bad IMO as far as the story went but the acting in the modern trilogy was bad. I think they suffered from the cast being fans of Star Wars and trying too hard to make it feel like the originals that it came across as fake and the overuse of CGI didn't help that.
This looks really cool. I had a best buy gift card lying around from last Christmas so I went ahead and ordered one. Can't wait! Planning on chasing the cats with it
I never liked Star Wars though am a big Sci-Fi fan. This does look really cool though. But on reflection I think it doesn't do much and could quickly get boring.
I'm kinda curious - how old you are? I first saw Star Wars in its first few days at the Chinese Theater
(I don't remember if, in 1977, it was still Grauman's, <span style="line-height:1.4em;">or was in that period when it was "Some Chain's Chinese Theater"),</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">and, for my money, the appearance of that Imperial Cruiser overhead </span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">is the most vivid cinematic memory of my life</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">(first porn on a computer screen a distant second, btw). I'd agree that the movies wear a little thin at some point. </span>
As to the toy, what could your puppy do when you first got it?
I was 9 in '77, taken to cinema and found it boring.
This isn't a typical toy replica either. Sphero built the BB-8 in Star Wars:
These can be built a couple of different ways. The head is held on by magnets and can use either wheels or ball-bearings to slide over the ball. Some 3rd parties have built one where the wheels on the head drive the ball direction but that's too limiting because it means the ball can't move independently from the head. A better way to do it is to take the original sphero, which internally has a separate gyro stabilized part:
then just add a vertical bar with a magnet on top. The bar would normally stay upright relative to the internal part but this then gives you the freedom to tilt and twist the bar separately from the ball movement so you could make the head move around the ball while the ball is stationary.
This kind of toy should be much more popular than something like Anki Drive because it fits into any environment and is much more dynamic. This is also a good thing for the app ecosystem because toys+apps have been making a lot of money like the Disney Infinity toys and Skylanders, which are making billions in revenues:
Game developers can have APIs that let kids import the toys into the apps and link what they do in the games with the toy's onboard software. They can sell in-app upgrades for the toys like new noises or dialog for spoken characters, music tracks (play Star Wars theme tune).
This is a smart move by Sphero because they probably didn't get paid that much to build the single unit for Star Wars but 7 million units of these and it's a billion-dollar company. Not bad for what looks to be about 80 employees.
where kids can program the ball to do things. They could perhaps make one with paint that kids program to draw out a picture. They can program AI on how to get out of a maze.
The video of the guy ripping apart the Sphero has never heard of Dremel?
Okay - I wonder if it would've helped to have had a lifetime of Plan Nine from Outer Space,
Rocketship X-M, and The Blob under your belt by then?
Possibly. I now have a son myself so we'll be watching them together soon.
It'll be interesting to see what he makes of them and what I make of them having not seen them in years.
The video of the guy ripping apart the Sphero has never heard of Dremel?
These guys figured out the Dremel (or cheap knockoff) was a better option:
[VIDEO]
Looks like a pretty solid toy. It should stand up to being dropped down a few flights of stairs. These would make pretty cool automated cleaning robots. Just sit it in a room and when you are out, it rolls over every patch of floor with a little vacuum. If it runs low on battery, it can move back to the charging point on its own.
It's probably more useful to build a design that can actually provide surface contact if you're doing to vacuum. I suggest something flat and round, maybe 35 cm in diameter.
It's probably more useful to build a design that can actually provide surface contact if you're doing to vacuum. I suggest something flat and round, maybe 35 cm in diameter.
A flat surface would be more efficient and powerful but the ball gives better freedom of movement as it doesn't have to turn. It can perhaps have an attachment that sits over the ball turning it into a flying saucer shape and the ball in the middle can move any direction without turning and it won't get stuck or have a model with a split sphere that has a larger circular suction part in the middle (this would have to turn though). Just call it over if you drop some crumbs. If they make it recognize voice commands, that would be good. That would be much more entertaining than the Amazon box. Ask it questions and it can reply in the following voice:
[VIDEO]
You can call it into the kitchen and ask it for recipes as you cook and ask it to set timers for you. When the cooking is ready, it can roll in front of the TV and tell you. AI should be more fun than being stuck on phones and boxes. It would be fun if it could switch voices for different content too. Check this guy's voice out:
[VIDEO]
His recording could be for weather, news, time, music playing.
If there's a real-time programmable SDK on the iPad, that would be quite fun for kids to use. Just being able to enter a line of code in Swift (or whatever language) to say BB8.move(10,1) and it would turn 10 degrees right and move 1 meter.
My students love using Tickle app to program the BB-8:
Comments
My cats asked me to pick one up for them when I get mine....
They got $50m in funding from venture capital firms, which should keep them going for a while. They are a private company so they probably won't release any sales data. I think they must have gotten linked up with Apple through one of Apple's ex-employees. Allison Johnson was an Apple VP of worldwide marketing and went on to co-found a marketing agency where Anki was a client:
http://www.cultofmac.com/270354/apples-former-marketing-chief-explains-like-work-steve-jobs-video/
It's all about who you know. To make back the $50m investment, assuming a margin of 50% they just have to sell about 1m units at $100. They could manage this ok. Anki and Sphero could even team up to have a circuit racing mod where two Spheros with a magnetic cap on top connecting them act like a motorbike. Add some cool illumination to the spheres and it'll keep someone entertained.
If there's a real-time programmable SDK on the iPad, that would be quite fun for kids to use. Just being able to enter a line of code in Swift (or whatever language) to say BB8.move(10,1) and it would turn 10 degrees right and move 1 meter. Then they start doing patterns. The AI could just be like path finding so if it was in a maze, it could detect when it hits a wall and then use that to map out the maze and figure out a way out of it. They can also do path-finding exercises like find the shortest route out of the maze. The robot can be programmed with a limiter by a teacher that only allows it to move the shortest possible path and it would never reach the exit unless the path search was programmed properly to take the shortest way out.
These kind of things can also be used to build Rube Goldberg style setups and they can be used as programmable wheels for vehicles so they could do vehicle manoeuvring algorithms for automated parking perhaps combined with 3D sensors.
The Avengers movies are quite popular but it's just action with them and some of them don't even need to be part of the team. What is Hawkeye there for? Ohhh each of the couple of arrows that you took a minute to fire helped save the day. Black Widow doesn't do much either of course but I can think of a couple of reasons to keep her in the team. I think Captain America is too dependent on the shield, once it gets taken away from him, he's just a normal guy.
There's too many heroes involved in the Avengers and neither those movies nor the Captain America movies on their own have much of a deep backstory. It's always something about some invasion or creature and then just action sequences with each of the heroes. They are entertaining to watch but forgettable. If you were to ask someone in 30 years what the plot for Captain America the Winter Soldier was, they wouldn't have a clue, even a year after release. But people still know all the details of Star Wars over 30 years later.
I don't think there's much to be excited about in the new ones because the main story has been told, they're not going to introduce a paternity test to find out Vader wasn't in fact Luke's father after all. It's similar to the idea of doing Back to the Future 4. The originals had closure. They're even switching director for Star Wars 8 so they might find it hard to keep them consistent. Star Wars is a universe though and there are more stories and characters to explore.
The alternative is to just let the franchise stay as it is and it would eventually be forgotten about. It'll at least answer the question of whether a decent Star Wars movie can be made after the original trilogy. Episode 3 wasn't bad IMO as far as the story went but the acting in the modern trilogy was bad. I think they suffered from the cast being fans of Star Wars and trying too hard to make it feel like the originals that it came across as fake and the overuse of CGI didn't help that.
Ah, but that's what I like about him.... (and the reason I mentioned none of the other names).
This does look really cool though.
But on reflection I think it doesn't do much and could quickly get boring.
In some ways, it's almost depressing to see Apple partnered with such a mediocre retail partner as Best Buy...
Went in to one this morning to see this - they had a piddling little "Force" endcap,
but had to look up what this was, and then, no, NOT in store, just for shipping to you.
More disappointingly, they had finally just this morning put out a single ?Watch - which
they were supposed to have had weeks ago - but had no idea it was even there, or whether
they'd be expanding to show at least some bands and sizes/models.
I know others have seen better presentations in their areas, but here, the Apple stuff was spread out a lot -
the Samsung presence was much more buttoned-down, organized-looking, and in direct line-of-sight to the store entrance...
And, of course, utterly deserted and ignored, but that's to be expected.
I never liked Star Wars though am a big Sci-Fi fan.
This does look really cool though.
But on reflection I think it doesn't do much and could quickly get boring.
I'm kinda curious - how old you are? I first saw Star Wars in its first few days at the Chinese Theater
(I don't remember if, in 1977, it was still Grauman's, or was in that period when it was "Some Chain's Chinese Theater"),
and, for my money, the appearance of that Imperial Cruiser overhead is the most vivid cinematic memory of my life
(first porn on a computer screen a distant second, btw). I'd agree that the movies wear a little thin at some point.
As to the toy, what could your puppy do when you first got it?
I was 9 in '77, taken to cinema and found it boring.
I'm kinda curious - how old you are?
I was 9 in '77, taken to cinema and found it boring.
Okay - I wonder if it would've helped to have had a lifetime of Plan Nine from Outer Space,
Rocketship X-M, and The Blob under your belt by then?
This isn't a typical toy replica either. Sphero built the BB-8 in Star Wars:
These can be built a couple of different ways. The head is held on by magnets and can use either wheels or ball-bearings to slide over the ball. Some 3rd parties have built one where the wheels on the head drive the ball direction but that's too limiting because it means the ball can't move independently from the head. A better way to do it is to take the original sphero, which internally has a separate gyro stabilized part:
then just add a vertical bar with a magnet on top. The bar would normally stay upright relative to the internal part but this then gives you the freedom to tilt and twist the bar separately from the ball movement so you could make the head move around the ball while the ball is stationary.
This kind of toy should be much more popular than something like Anki Drive because it fits into any environment and is much more dynamic. This is also a good thing for the app ecosystem because toys+apps have been making a lot of money like the Disney Infinity toys and Skylanders, which are making billions in revenues:
http://fortune.com/2015/07/24/toys-to-life-market/
Game developers can have APIs that let kids import the toys into the apps and link what they do in the games with the toy's onboard software. They can sell in-app upgrades for the toys like new noises or dialog for spoken characters, music tracks (play Star Wars theme tune).
This is a smart move by Sphero because they probably didn't get paid that much to build the single unit for Star Wars but 7 million units of these and it's a billion-dollar company. Not bad for what looks to be about 80 employees.
They also have education programs:
http://www.sphero.com/education
where they can use apps like the following:
https://www.tynker.com
where kids can program the ball to do things. They could perhaps make one with paint that kids program to draw out a picture. They can program AI on how to get out of a maze.
The video of the guy ripping apart the Sphero has never heard of Dremel?
Possibly. I now have a son myself so we'll be watching them together soon.
It'll be interesting to see what he makes of them and what I make of them having not seen them in years.
These guys figured out the Dremel (or cheap knockoff) was a better option:
[VIDEO]
Looks like a pretty solid toy. It should stand up to being dropped down a few flights of stairs. These would make pretty cool automated cleaning robots. Just sit it in a room and when you are out, it rolls over every patch of floor with a little vacuum. If it runs low on battery, it can move back to the charging point on its own.
A flat surface would be more efficient and powerful but the ball gives better freedom of movement as it doesn't have to turn. It can perhaps have an attachment that sits over the ball turning it into a flying saucer shape and the ball in the middle can move any direction without turning and it won't get stuck or have a model with a split sphere that has a larger circular suction part in the middle (this would have to turn though). Just call it over if you drop some crumbs. If they make it recognize voice commands, that would be good. That would be much more entertaining than the Amazon box. Ask it questions and it can reply in the following voice:
[VIDEO]
You can call it into the kitchen and ask it for recipes as you cook and ask it to set timers for you. When the cooking is ready, it can roll in front of the TV and tell you. AI should be more fun than being stuck on phones and boxes. It would be fun if it could switch voices for different content too. Check this guy's voice out:
[VIDEO]
His recording could be for weather, news, time, music playing.
What is the primary purpose of a vacuum cleaner? Freedom of movement, or better suck?
FWIW, the Roomba has already been invented, and works rather well.
that would be murder.
I feel like you missed an opportunity.
[VIDEO]
Does anyone else remember this movie?
http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/04/star-wars-bb-8-teardown/
If there's a real-time programmable SDK on the iPad, that would be quite fun for kids to use. Just being able to enter a line of code in Swift (or whatever language) to say BB8.move(10,1) and it would turn 10 degrees right and move 1 meter.
My students love using Tickle app to program the BB-8:
http://tickleapp.com/
We also use it to program Dash & Dot and drones at our robotics club.
My only wish is for Tickle to support LEGO EV3.