Archiv der Kategorie: Fun

Segway Robotics Defines the Future of Mobile Robots with Loomo

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San Francisco, California – March 6, 2018 – Segway Robotics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Segway-Ninebot Group, is proud to launch Loomo, a smart machine that toggles between a mini personal transporter and mobile robot sidekick. Loomo is now available for pre-order on Indiegogo today, with limited early bird pricing starting at $1299.

Loomo will launch with a core set of foundational features, with more capabilities unlocked over time through over-the-air (OTA) updates. Out of the box, you can ride Loomo as a mini transporter, let it follow you autonomously as a robot sidekick, or show off Loomo’s playful personality to your friends. Loomo also comes with a free Android-based SDK for professional developers and enthusiasts alike to build on top of our mobility + AI platform.

 

Loomo’s key features include:

 

  • Self-Balancing Transporter: Smooth ride experience across most terrain types, with speeds of up to 11 MPH, and the capacity to cover 22 miles in one charge; a voice-based tutorial allows anyone to learn how to ride Loomo in mere minutes
  • Auto-Follow Expert: With advanced computer vision, Loomo can follow you autonomously, shoot stabilized video, and more
  • Avatar: Use your smartphone as a remote control to access all of Loomo’s capabilities – see, speak, interact, and explore as if you are Loomo
  • Friendly & Expressive Personality: Powered by its emotion engine, Loomo’s lovable nature and lighthearted expressions will cheer you up and impress everyone around you
  • Multiple Control Methods: You can control Loomo via your smartphone app, voice command, gestures and touch sensors
  • New Skills Unlocked Over-the-Air (OTA): Loomo will continuously update its software and app OTA to include new features
  • Free Loomo Android SDK for developers: Directly access Loomo’s mobility and AI capabilities to build a range of playful features or practical solutions

 

“Segway-Ninebot has already put millions of wheels on the ground that cover 180 million kilometers each year. But what happens if you combine Segway’s proven mobility technology with cutting-edge AI? Well say hello to Loomo,” said Li Pu, President of Segway Robotics.  “For many, Loomo is a reflection of our movie fantasies growing up… it embodies our vision of how mobile personal robots can become a part of our everyday lives.”

The Loomo Indiegogo campaign launches March 6, 2018. Limited early bird pricing will be set at $1299. The basic pack includes 1 Loomo, 1 AC/DC adapter, 1 extended air tap, and 1 USB 3.0 Type-C cable. Loomo will begin shipping to backers in May 2018.

About Segway Robotics

Segway Robotics is a privately held company that focuses on developing and commercializing personal robots. Founded in 2015, it is fully owned by Segway-Ninebot Group, a Series C company. The company has notable backers including the likes of Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital and Xiaomi.

To find out more about Segway Robotics: http://www.segwayrobotics.com/

Meet your weird new robot friend! KD Interactive introduces My Loopy, a social robot that teaches early stem concepts

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February 16, 2018 – New York, NY – KD Interactive, maker of the best-selling line of kid-safe Kurio tablets and smartwatches, today introduces an innovative and fun new item for 2018: My Loopy, a social robot for kids as young as four.

“Teaching early STEM concepts through play is still an important focus in the toy industry and we saw a gap to fill for younger children in particular,” said Eric Levin, KD Group Strategic Director. “My Loopy is a fun and quirky robot companion that also introduces early coding skills for kids as young as four.”

KD Interactive’s new products for 2018 include:

My Loopy is a three-inch tall robot from the planet Loopitron with a big and quirky personality! Created by the scientists at LocoRobo, Loopy uses eight different sensors (light, tilt, motion, touch, temperature, proximity, gesture and sound) and artificial intelligence to engage kids as young as four through imaginative visual and auditory play. Loopy’s AI technology allows him to grow and create new play patterns as he interacts with his human buddy.

Loopy responds to his environment in real time: Turn off the lights and Loopy might go to sleep or say „Let’s partyyyyyyyyyyy!“ Make a loud noise to scare him. Watch Loopy shiver if the temperature gets cold or complain, „Ouch! I’m burning up!“ if it gets hot. With more than 150 jokes and quirky responses, you never know if he’ll greet you with „I missed you so much!“ or „What do ya want? I’m kinda busy here!“

Play eight different games with Loopy, including favorites like Hide-and-Seek and Simon Says. When paired with the My Loopy app (iOS/Android), kids can learn how to code their own Loopy responses, play games that test math and geography skills, and even create their own music for Loopy to dance to!

Loopy features multi-color animations and LED eyes that reflect his emotions and reactions, giving him a human-like personality! MSRP $79.99, Ages 4+, Rechargeable battery included, Available Fall 2018

About KD Interactive

KD Interactive is a division of KD Group, based in Lyon, France. The company has been making innovative kids electronic toys for more than 20 years, working with mass and specialty retailers in more than 20 countries around the world. The company’s in-house team of product engineers, scientists and educators is focused on creating products with huge play value that incorporate cutting-edge technologies into learning and childhood development. KD Interactive is well-known globally for its best-selling Kurio® line of kid-safe tablets and smart devices. For more information about KD Interactive, visit Group-KD.com.

BOOST – A Stop Motion Story

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Baltimore, Maryland – 2018 Duration 13 minutes, 18 seconds – English

SYNOPSIS

BOOST is a short film about a robot and its journey. It is a story of courage and survival.

A broken robot is thrown away into a vast junkyard. There he befriends another misfit and they work together to escape. Filmed in stop motion format.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Boost is a story of a tragic friendship in the tradition of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Our film revolves around the faith between friends and the reality that true friendship requires a sacrifice. Our stop motion film follows a broken robot named Boost. After breaking his arm, Boost is determined to be useless by his creators; he is then thrown away into a vast junkyard. There, he meets a fellow misfit in a crash- landed Astronaut. They must find the will to work together to escape the perilous junkyard or they perish separately.

Support it here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/boost-a-stop-motion-story-movie-animation#/

Elemental Path, maker of award-winning cognitoys, launches Indiegogo campaign for new artificial intelligence learning companion toy Stemosaur

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NEW YORK  – Elemental Path, known for its award-winning line of artificial intelligence toys for kids, today launches an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to support its newest product in the CogniToys family, STEMosaur. The STEMosaur is a customizable toy that doubles as a learning companion for children, combining the best elements of the flagship CogniToys Dino, such as the Friendgine, with a more hands-on approach featuring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) elements, as well as lessons in Coding. The Indiegogo campaign aims to raise $25,000 in 45 days, with the super early bird backer level starting at just $99. To support this campaign, visit https://igg.me/at/stemosaur.

“We launched the Dino in 2015 with a very successful crowdfunding campaign that raised over a quarter-million dollars. In the past two years since, we’ve definitely learned a lot about our users and what they want in a product, and we are using these important lessons to create an even better and more hands-on experience with kids,” said Donald Coolidge, CEO and co-founder of Elemental Path. “This time around with the STEMosaur, we’ll be offering a more interactive and engaging experience – where kids will have the ability to construct the STEMosaur from scratch, carry intelligent conversation, play games and also learn the basics of coding.”

With STEMosaur, kids ages seven and older can construct, code and play. The learning begins with a hands-on exercise that allows children to construct their new friend from a variety of building pieces to bring it to life. Once constructed, the Wi-Fi enabled STEMosaur is immediately capable of holding conversation, telling jokes and playing games that engage the user’s imagination and creativity. This is achieved through Elemental Path’s own Friendgine technology, a cloud-based artificial intelligence software platform that allows the smart toy to hold intelligent conversation with the child and share answers to questions in real time.

In addition, Elemental Path is launching its Coding Panel, an easy-to-use platform that will teach different elements of how to code and allow kids to create their own custom educational content and STEMosaur programming. The Coding Panel may be accessed through a computer or tablet and registers with the individual toy. Such features include coding the STEMosaur to tell unique jokes, share additional stories and play games of the child’s choosing.

“It’s clear that parents want their kids to play with toys that teach something, especially elements of coding and STEM. We see the STEMosaur, and the CogniToys line as a whole, as a way to unlock kids’ creativity and foster their imaginations through intelligent hands-on play,” added Coolidge. “Our goal is for CogniToys to help fuel the next generation of engineers and scientists.”

STEMosaur is also equipped with a Parent Panel so that parents can stay engaged and informed about what their child is learning. The Parent Panel monitors usage patterns and learning progress. It also includes features such as a bedtime setting. Parents can use this platform to contribute directly to the child’s educational experience, programming their own stories, jokes, games and more.

 

The Indiegogo campaign is now live and running through October 3rd with the goal of raising $25,000. Backer levels range from $99 to $255. There are also two special, higher-priced backer packages – a donation bundle priced at $1,250, where CogniToys will match your product purchase with a donation of 10 STEMosaurs to the school of your choice; and a $2,500 package, where you will receive an engraved STEMosaur and have the opportunity to tour the production facility and enjoy other exclusive perks. The company will ship all STEMosaurs in November for receipt in December 2017, so backers will be able to give the gift of STEMosaur this holiday season.

To view the campaign page, please visit https://igg.me/at/stemosaur. To learn more about Elemental Path and CogniToys, visit www.cognitoys.com.

Matt Dixon Robot Calendar 2018

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British illustrator Matt Dixon is bringing his 2018 robot calendar to Kickstarter in September. The calendar will be A3 in size, offset printed in full colour, spiral bound and features a robot artwork printed full page for each month of the year.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1619265419/2018-robot-calendar

The images are drawn from Matt’s ‚Transmissions‘ series of  robot art books. The first volume was published in 2013, followed by a second funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015. Another Kickstarter campaign in 2017 gave birth to the third volume in the series, plus two books of ‚Blueprints‘ featuring drawings from Matt’s sketchbooks showing the development of some of the paintings in the ‚Transmissions‘ collection in addition to ideas that have yet to become finished paintings.

Matt is reluctant to share much information about his robots or the world they inhabit, preferring to allow the viewer to interpret the images as they find them.

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Bio

Matt Dixon was born in Birmingham, England in 1972 and has been an enthusiastic waver of brushes, crayons and pens for as long as he can remember. He began to use computers as an artistic tool in 1980 and first  contributed graphics to videogames as a teenager. Matt went on to work full time in games development before making the jump to freelance in 2012. He now works as an illustrator and concept artist, still mostly within the games industry.

 

London Science Museum – Robots Exhibiton

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London Science Museum – Robots Exhibiton

Canadian visual artist Andrei Feheregyhazi seeks to create a ‘Sexy Robot Pin-Up Calendar.’

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Andrei came up with the idea while working on designs for an upcoming book project featured robots.  One of the designs was a box with one eyeball and arms.  He showed it to the woman sitting next to him and mentioned he still needed to add legs.  She said, “you should make them sexy legs.”  He did, and that gave birth to the Sexy Robot Pin-Up Calendar.

Andrei is intrigued by the fact that robots are not inherently sexy, but his robots do their best to look sexy.   As robots, they don’t they don’t understand human sexuality and attraction.  As a result, they look to sexy calendars, sexy Halloween costumes, television and movies, and burlesque shows.  Due to this the robots create an adorably awkward version of “Sexy.”

While the calendar is meant to be fun and enjoyable, it also explores issues of sexuality, objectification, and gender identity. The robots don’t identify as any gender.  This means that although a firefighter with washboard abs is typically seen as male, there’s no reason the viewer couldn’t decide it was female or not assign a gender.

The Kickstarter campaign has set a goal of $9,000 and describes the calendar as „featuring adorable robots trying their best to look sexy and romance their way into your hearts.“

„I like the idea of things that don’t understand human attraction trying their best to represent human attraction,“ said Feheregyhazi.

VEX IQ Frog

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Maybe you have seen my VEX IQ frog at VEX Worlds or on VEX Robotics Facebook and Twitter channel.

 

My fellow VEX IQ SuperUser Andreas Dreier created building instructions for my robots, I want to share with you here.

The Complete Package for the green and gray version, including the RobotC program, can be downloaded here:

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If you have any questions or problems regarding the VEX IQ Frog, you can find me in the VEX IQ Robotics Facebook Group

SuperBot to the Rescue!

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It’s time to do some superpower thinking and show us a Super Robot, a.k.a. SuperBot! Make it super cool, super geeky, super smart, or super fun, and show us what makes your robot a SuperBot – and what dilemma, challenge, or chore it rescues you from! The greatest SuperBot will send his or her creator on a super-duper trip to LEGO World Copenhagen.

Grand Prize: A trip to LEGO World Copenhagen in February 2017 where you will get to show your SuperBot to thousands of LEGO fans.

Judging

A panel of judges from the LEGO MINDSTORMS team will select one grand prize winner and 2 runner-ups. They will judge entries upon:

  • Super-factor originality: 25%
  • Attention to contest theme: 25%
  • Innovative building technique and functions: 25%
  • Innovative use of LEGO elements: 25%

How to enter

  • Visit: https://www.lego.com/en-us/rebrick/contest-page/contests/superbots
  • Create a robot using LEGO bricks and your LEGO MINDSTORMS robot (EV3 or earlier model) or power functions to solve an everyday challenge of your choosing
  • Create a video under 30 seconds showing your creation in action
  • Upload your video to the video hosting site of your choice, such as YouTube
  • Enter the contest by going to the “submit entry” page on LEGO Rebrick and submit maximum 5 screenshots from your video. Make sure to also add the link to your video before you submit
  • Use the description field to describe your robot and its features

Submit your entry at: https://www.lego.com/en-us/rebrick/contest-page/contests/superbots

Entry Deadline

Submit your entry no later than August 18th 2017 at 10:00AM EST.

If you’re not sure what time zone you’re in here’s a time zone converter