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Romo is a little iPhone-powered robot that showed up on Kickstarter around this time last year. It was successfully funded and distributed out into the world, making everyone happy by cycling itself around with the buzz and whirr of tiny mechanics. But as is usual with these things, the team behind Romo had even more ideas and other thoughts about how to make Romo work even better, and do even more things. So they did what worked before: They’re back on Kickstarter, this time trying to put together $100,000 to remake a next-generation Romo.
In addition to a redesigned circuit board and a friendlier base, this robot will have advanced functionality in terms of moving around and navigating the world. Plus, the team wants to work on some really advanced procedures, doing things like facial recognition, two-way telepresence (so you could see what the robot sees and show up on the screen yourself), and other features. The production line for this robot is already set up, says the team — it’s the software that they are Kickstarting for, as well as the actual product costs, obviously.
There is one big drawback, and it’s that this new Romo won’t work with an iPhone 5 — the production line that’s set up currently works with the old dock connector, not the new Lightning connector. That could be an issue, since lots of early adopters will probably already have moved on to the new dock format. But the Romo team says the next robot is set to work with the iPhone 5 (and be female, by the way), so the hookup is coming, at least. At any rate, if you like the project and want to support this once-successful team yet again, the Kickstarter page is open right now.
[via Engadget]
Romo the iPhone robot is back, Kickstarting version 2 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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