Hasta La Gadget!

As soon as we saw Georgia Tech’s Shimi, we wanted to how many sleepless nights we’d have to spend waiting for one to proudly display on our desk. And really that’s the whole idea behind the iPhone-enabled dancing robot: bringing some sophisticated robotic concepts to the consumer, in an adorable little package. Now the wall-eyed “first musically intelligent robotic speaker dock” has hit Kickstarter, ready to dance its way into reality. When finished, Shimi will feature six-watt speakers on either side of its face and five motors that allow it to dance and turn its head to the best position for optimal listening. Shimi does the latter via facial recognition software, tracking you around the room. The ‘bot can also respond to verbal requests like “look at me,” and “play Justin Bieber” (their suggestion, not ours). In the future, its creators will be offering up apps for gaming, telepresence and the like, as well as an SDK for developers.

The Kickstarter page has a decidedly lofty $100,000 goal to hit by October 10th. Pledge $129 or more, and you get a Shimi of your very own. Check out a video of the ‘bot and its creators after the break.

Continue reading Insert Coin: Shimi iPhone robot is ready to dance its way out of the lab, into your heart

Filed under: Robots

Insert Coin: Shimi iPhone robot is ready to dance its way out of the lab, into your heart originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dancing is fun. Robots are fun. Therefore, robot dance parties should rock the house. There’s nothing better then having a robot show up and dance his metal butt off to the music. It makes everyone smile. Okay, so what if a walking six-speaker sound system robot showed up at your party? It would be awesome right? You know it.

The guy in the costume is Chris. He really loves how people smile and brighten up and dance when he puts on that robot costume with the built-in speakers. He’s a good guy and just wants to spread happiness. And that’s why he has a Kickstarter project to upgrade the costume.

Some of what he wants to do includes: adding arduino hardware that would allow him to synchronize the light patterns with the music, upgrade the sound system, mount a tablet to the side with a music library so fans can pick their own songs, add a karaoke microphone + music selection and electronic sign to scroll lyrics… and so much more.

Robot dance parties are already awesome. Now help Chris knock it out of the park and make his dancing robot even more amazing. The fundraising goal is just $1,500. Right now $28 has been pledged with 18 days to go. Make it happen. Everbody needs more dancing robots.

[Kickstarter via Botropolis]