Your Ad Here

My Keepon drops by for a temporary hands-on, we will not handle the cuteness (video)

See that little dude up there? That’s My Keepon, and it may look familiar if you are a fan Spoon or maintaining with autism and related human interaction research. It was virtually four years ago that we glimpsed the unique dancing research robot by BeatBots dubbed Keepon, and now the $50 toy version we’d been teased is finally set to make its debut this holiday season. Considering its Pro sibling costs nearly $30k, we were curious to peer how well this version made by Wow! Stuff would keep the original’s essence in tow. To determine, we spent a while with a pre-production unit and had Marek Michalowski, co-inventor of the robot, walk us through it.

Essentially, My Keepon has two modes: dance and touch — the corporate won’t reveal much about what is going on inside, but it’s pretty clear when you use it for a couple of minutes. This Keepon’s got several sensors strewn around its insides: a button atop its head and 4 squeeze points on its lower half. The bottom houses the remainder of its internal motors, and acts as a stage upon which Little K can spin around on while dancing or appearing to go looking for interaction. The ground of said base also acts as a battery compartment for a whopping eight AAs, which we’re told will keep it powered for a number of hours. Thankfully, there’s also an input for an influence adapter, but one won’t be included when it hits retail.

My Keepon drops by for a temporary hands-on, we will not handle the cuteness (video)

Counting on the way you press My Keepon, you’re going to get quite a lot of quirky and cute reactions from tilting to bouncing, together with accompanying sound effects. The feel is incredibly odd to assert the least — it’s type of like a stretchy rubber with a gentle amount of tack to it. On a negative note, it sort of feels to be a mud magnet, which does not bode well for its vivid yellow exterior being handled peanut butter encrusted fingers. The eyes don’t have any cameras just like the Pro, but there is a microphone placed in its noise that reacts to scratching with an animated sneeze. That microphone also serves the twin purpose of letting MK dance with near expert timing.

In dance mode, My Keepon listens for a tempo and begins strutting its stuff within just a few seconds, matching the groove. We noticed that while dancing it should pause after a couple of bursts seeming to make certain it was still in time before beginning again. We’re told this is often normal, but it is a shame MK looks to be reluctant about holding a groove for a number of passes. The motors on Little K also sounded fairly noisy, but with moderate levels of music playing it were mostly washed away — we will only hope that they’d find yourself just a little quieter inside the final run. Of the entire music we played, dubstep and punk rock appeared to get it going essentially the mostsome of the most. Switching between faster and slower sections were met with relative ease and typically practically the mark considering how often My Keepon loves to double check.

In case you are already swooning on your own piece of the cuteness they’re currently available for pre-order at Toys ‘R’ Us for approximately $50, with a part of the proceeds would be put aside to fund future Pro versions of their autism research. There are more details inside the source link below, however the meantime, you’ll just need to hit the replay button at the videos above for a double douse of adorable.

Source

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • email
  • PDF
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Google Bookmarks
  • RSS

This post is tagged: , , , ,

Leave a Reply





  • The Engadget Interview: BlackBerry PlayBook product manager Michael ClewleyThe Engadget Interview: BlackBerry PlayBook product manager Michael Clewley

    There's no getting around it: it has been a coarse couple of years for Research in Motion. This week's on-time release of its PlayBook 2.0 software marked an extraordinary bright spot in an otherwise grim era, bringing much needed features for the QNX platform similar to a unified inbox, deeper social integration and updates to the company's BlackBerry Bridge app.At the identical time,… »
  • Mozilla rumored to debut LG-made Boot to Gecko device at MWCMozilla rumored to debut LG-made Boot to Gecko device at MWC

    Mozilla hasn't exactly been quiet in regards to the indisputable fact that it has some big stuff to turn off at Mobile World Congress. We've already gotten a peek at Boot to Gecko and it's announced it will become joining the app market fray . But, what we have not heard anything about just yet, is hardware. A mobile operating system and software outlet are just useful if you could… »

Categories

Subscribe

Enter your email address: