Modular Robo-Cube Toy Thing

K for Cool

(via)

Apart (perhaps) from the German Ginger Catweasel… who seems to have a slightly French Accent, with a large dash of Scandinavian. Swiss then.

Seriously though, this is a really cool toy. Possibly steals a bit of the thunder from the Twine thing

THAT MADE OVER 1/2 A MILLION $ ON KICKSTARTER!!! even though it actually looks like a the sort of wax that you use to make skis go faster. The strength of Twine though is that it provides an interface a bit like an Email “Message-Rules” interface… which is actually a bit of a quantum-leap I think… and an application that would have a lot of traction in smartphones… because 5 years from now, there’s probably going to be quite a lot of them lying about not being used… and they have FAR more sensors and smarts than Twine, already built in, already with drivers, already working.

Speaking of which – I managed to sell over $1000 worth of Golden Mean Calipers in one day a couple of days ago… so am finally cracking and getting a smartphone. From no cellphone at all to $800 smartphone in a single bound. I kindof needed to anyway because I’d bought one of those little smartphone robots from Kickstarter…

Something I felt semi-obliged to do, even though I didn’t have a phone myself, because I’ve been predicting this would happen for the last couple of years.

The last thing I invested in in Kickstarter was the 3D Printing Filament From Recycled Bottles project… I just punted them a single dollar (they’d already made their goal) because I want to be kept up to date with how they get on. I’ve actually paid to be on a mailing list… although obviously the motivations are a little more complicated than that.

Back to the modular toy robot… although that’s really cool, when I say “Steals the thunder from Twine”… what I mean is “It doesn’t really”… because what Twine is, is a general-purpose device… so is therefore more configurable etc. One is really good for putting on a coffee table and playing with… kindof executive-toy-like… the other potentially has real-world applications. Additionally, the Modrobotic thing currently costs $160 for a minimum set… and the benefits of having more than one set multiply… so it’s possibly a bit expensoid to be hacking into real-world apps.

Interesting though. Kindof gives the lego concept a whole new dimension. When I was a kid we had a lego-like system made up of 1cm cubes that could click together (probably still got it somewhere). This is kindof like that, but each cube can actually do stuff.

This is Catweazle

ps: … ahhh… I knew those things looked familiar