This is one of those products where it's hard to say if this qualifies for more
the tech channel or the cat channel. This is the Sphero from Orotics. And
basically what it is is if you check out the green one that's out there in the
the track that they've set up. That's the one that I'm controlling with this
iPod touch. And I'm just going to bring it around back to us. Hello everybody at
the Sparro booth. We're about to start another Sparro race. Um, this is John
from Sparro and I'd like him to explain just a little bit what the heck is going
on with this thing. How does how do I set this up and get this working?
So Sphere is a smartphone control robotic wall. It works on Android and iOS.
And how work it is you you shake it to wake it up and it's going to blink three
colors. You connect to it over Bluetooth and then you can drive it around. We have over 20 different apps and games
that you can use either control sphero or you can actually use sphero as a
controller and tilt it in your hand to turn around.
In addition, we have some new augmented reality games that have just come out like Sharky the Beaver and uh the
Rolling Dead which we just announced. Um do you want to drive in the race? Uh no,
no, I'm okay. Let's uh let's sort of let's sort of focus on how you actually
manage to race multiples of these things at a time. How the heck do you know
which one you're connecting to? Um, so when you connect to it, you can
actually bring up the uh Bluetooth screen here. And
uh there we go. So you can see there's a bunch of different spheros like blue,
yellow, blue, green, red, red, purple, orange, red, white, purple, white. Uh so
when you wake up your sphere, it's going to flash the threecolor code and you know which one to connect to. So if you
and your brother both get a sphere on Christmas morning, you'll know which one
you need to connect to. Now, how durable is this thing? Is it appropriate as a
cat toy? I mean, can I throw it for my dog even? Oh, yes. My dog chews on it
all the time. In fact, I can actually take it uh stand on it on the floor and
I'm putting all my weight on that one foot and I'm not crushing it. And uh you
can actually uh just throw it out there and if you go back to the home screen
there and relaunch the app, you'll be able to drive it around just fine up
there. Wow. Very cool stuff. Okay, so how much
does one of these cost? Uh retails for $129. It's available at the Apple store
and Target. Now, do I have to control it with the Joyad or do I have other
options? So, if you press this button down here, you can actually switch it into tilt mode. So, now you hold it
flat, it's going to stay still, but as you tilt it, it's going to drive in
whichever direction you tilt it. So, unlike an RC car, there isn't an obvious
front of the Sphero. So, how does it know that when I tilt it this way, it
needs to move away from me? Uh, so when you first start playing with it, you
actually have to aim it. So, you press this button right here. I think ours is
behind the pillar. All right. So, we got all our Spheros on the left. Little blue
light comes on. We point that blue light towards us and then Sparro knows where
we're standing in relation. Put this little blue light this way cuz we are
going clockwise. All right. Thanks, guys. So, this was the Spar from Ortics.
Don't miss any of our CES 2013 coverage. And as always, don't forget to subscribe
to Linus Tech Tips. You have a
We actually didn't make it away from the robotics booth just yet. that they have
an augmented reality game with their
little ball device here that doesn't look like a ball anymore at all. In
fact, it looks well, if you look down at the ground, it looks like a ball. But if
you look at the screen that's taking a feed from the iPad being held by Fabitio
here, it is a beaver that is running around on the ground. So you guys are
replacing with the camera on the iPad, the ball with this beaver model. Yeah,
that's correct. Yep. Yeah. So, we're we're tracking the ball in every frame
and using it to figure out where the ball is, where the camera is, and that
allows us to draw any kind of 3D content we want. In this app, we just draw over
the ball, but uh we have other apps where we draw other objects in. Zombies
come up out of the ground, coins to collect, all sorts of things. Now, you
showed us here. Do you want to just turn yourself so that uh Oh, yeah. I guess
here. Just bring the There you go. There you go. So, now you can see what he
looks like. He actually gets bigger as the ball gets closer. Can you take him a
little bit further away from us so that we can see how he Yeah, there we go. So
we can see how he gets smaller as he gets further away. So you have a game where you can chuck cupcakes to him and
you can fling them quite a distance in order to try to feed Mr. Sharky over
there. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. All right. So guys, very very
cool demo. It goes beyond just sort of, you know, racing it around on a track. I
mean, this is more of a tech demo at this point, but you guys have plans to
continue to develop this in the future. Yeah, definitely. Over the next year, we're going to build this out. I mean,
the gameplay opportunities are really huge. You know, you can multiplayer,
replace it with, you know, any kind of avatar you want. Uh, drop static objects
in your living room and go visit them later. It's sort of crazy. Lots of lots
of lots of opportunity for innovation. Very cool stuff. Guys, don't miss any of
our CES 2013 coverage. Make sure you're subscribed to Linus Tech Tips.