Sphero RVR – The Go Anywhere, Do Anything Programmable Robot

Happy they designed the robot with a replaceable battery! I received an Ollie as a gift back in 2014, and the battery is flat-out dead. Wish I could still fiddle with it.

I’m a bit surprised Sphero is using Kickstarter for this campaign — they’re a large company now with access to plenty of cash, I assume. Pre-orders have usually been a part of their independent product launches (i.e. the products that aren’t Lightning McQueen), so I could see this as an extension of that strategy with a maker/hacker/DIY aesthetic. Crowds out Kickstarter and makes it harder for the smaller operations to get discovered though.

In general (and take this with a grain of salt because I don’t know robots, only familiar with Sphero’s history), I think Sphero accidentally positioned themselves super well for building out products like these. They started with a robot-in-a-ball. Literally a two-wheeled robot driving like a hamster in a ball. In order to support a user-friendly driving experience with the original Sphero, they invested in the accelerometer and gyroscopic sensors and the way they provide feedback to the drive system. So even when the wheels would slip inside the ball, the robot would detect the change in heading and adjust to suit the driver’s original intent. They mention briefly in the video how this RVR bot can hold its heading on bumpy terrain, and I assume that’s the same platform at work. It’s neat to me because this feedback mechanism sounds like the kind of thing that’s hard to patch onto a robotic platform produced at scale and get it right, to the extent that folks won’t bother. They kinda got that one “for free” by validating that folks will buy a ball, and it looks like it’s been a solid platform for other variations on driving robots. (But again, I don’t know much about robots. This could be standard practice for all I know.)

Sphero as a company has done a great job making accessible bots that can be used for both fun at home and education at school. That gives me high hopes for this new bot! Expandability, swappable battery, and price point are top of the list for edu and looking promising so far. Hope we'll hear more about sensors and features in this thread!

This looks super interesting. You can probably learn a lot if you pair this with a 3D printer, especially in the education industry. To be honest, I want one for myself! I'm surprised that they are willing to give Kickstarter a 20% cut when they could of done a preorder system since they are a reputable brand to begin with.