The Kid in Me Wants One of These Rolling Robots for Christmas
Robonica, a startup in Beverly, MA, is rolling out a new robot toy this week, via the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. My story about the debut is up at Xconomy this morning. I had a chance to play with one of the Roboni-i devices at MassTLC’s Tech Tuesday event a couple of weeks ago, and I think they have all the ingredients that will keep a certain type of user (like me) engrossed for hours on end.
The device’s giant wheels remind me of one of the military robots in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But while that robot merely charged across the battlefield, the Roboni-i is incredibly nimble; one innovative feature is that the remote control provides separate controls for the right and left wheels, meaning you can make the robot turn on a dime, flip over, and do all sorts of other tricks. Plus, it’s fully programmable—right down to the C++ code, if you want to venture that far.
