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It’s been a busy year for Sphero, with the release of products like R2-D2, Spider-Man and Lightning McQueen. But the robotic toy startup is still making non-licensed, non-tie in products too — including the Sphero Mini, its most affordable toy yet.

“We wanted to make Sphero products accessible to everyone,” said co-founder and Chief Software Architect Adam Wilson.

source: TechCrunch

Sphero was ready to conquer the world last year. The company quintupled its product release schedule, flying high with the help of a Disney licensing deal that gave the world several Star Wars droids and talking Spider-Man and Lightning McQueen robots.

But following a holiday season that failed to live up to expectations, the company recently laid off 45 staff members globally, TechCrunch has learned, a move it says has impacted departments company-wide.

The majority of the layoffs were centered in the company’s Colorado headquarters, but staff cuts also affected its global offices in the U.K. and Hong Kong.

“We restructured our team on Friday to better align with our product needs,” a spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch. “As we look to our product development schedule for 2018 and beyond, we weren’t going to go that deep, so we had to make some changes for how the teams were structured.”

The move is a step back for the company and a bit of a surprise for those who have been following its trajectory from afar. After participating in Disney’s accelerator back in 2014, the hardware startup got a small investment from the entertainment goliath and began production on a BB-8 toy released alongside 2015’s blockbuster Star Wars return, The Force Awakens.

In 2017 alone, the company released new toys based on R2D2, The Last Jedi‘s BB-9E, Spider-Man and Pixar’s Cars franchise, along with Sphero Mini, a smaller, sub-$50 version of the smartphone-controlled ball that started it all.

The startup had bolstered its headcount to meet the demands of its much accelerated output.

It’s telling, of course, that the layoffs come so soon after the holidays. While not disastrous, the final tally pointed to the need for a rethink in strategy going forward. “[Sales weren’t] exactly what we had expected,” the spokesperson said. “We still consider ourselves a young startup. It’s the right time to pivot.”

The decrease comes as it shifts toward a product roadmap more in line with the pre-2017 days — putting it at closer to one to two products per year. “That might be our sweet spot,” the spokesperson added. “We’re still pretty young, but the one part of our business that continues to shine is what we’re doing in education. This allows our company to focus on that vision.”

This restructuring finds Sphero investing much more of its existing resources into the education side of its business. The company has been operating in the category for some time, leveraging its hardware creations in an offering designed to target schools, but that side has largely taken a backseat to Sphero’s more commercial offerings until now.

Educational robotics — STEM/STEAM specifically — is an extremely competitive space, as well. CES last week was overloaded with companies big and small pushing into the category with a variety of different platforms, and from the looks of things, next month’s Toy Fair in New York won’t be much different.

But Sphero has the marked advantage of building on top of its own popular robotics platform. In fact, it ran popular pilot programs in its native Colorado that garnered coverage in places like Wired and The New Yorker last year and in 2016.

The company’s SPRK+ Education offers educators and parents a platform for teaching coding and robotics. Sphero’s package lets kids program its connected toys through coding, offering a real world robotics platform on the cheap.

“[Education] is something we can actually own,” the company’s spokesperson says hopefully. “Where we do well are those experiences we can 100-percent own, from inception to go-to-market.”

Sphero co-founder and CTO Ian Bernstein also recently left the company to spin out a new startup, Misty Robotics. It isn’t designed to be a direct competitor, focusing instead on home assistant robotics, but former staffers did join Bernstein at the new company. Misty will also have its own programmable robot, though its offering, the Misty I, is focused primarily on adult developers.

source: TechCrunch

If hardware is hard, robotics are next to impossible. Even so, Sphero managed an impressive feat over its first five years, growing from a small Colorado startup with a glowing, smartphone-controlled ball into the maker of the most talked about piece of merchandise for cinema’s biggest blockbuster franchise.

Over the course of the past year, the company ramped up its product line from between one and two releases a year to five. In 2017 alone, the company released two new Star Wars toys, a Spider-Man figure, a talking Lighting McQueen car and a new, smaller version of its titular RC controlled ball.

But last week, it became abundantly clear that not all was rosy with the company — the company cut 45 jobs. That number represented more than a quarter of the company’s then 170-person staff. It was a regrettable end to a small hire spree Sphero had engaged in to ramp up for the demands of its Disney licensing deal.

As Sphero CEO Paul Berberian explained on a call with TechCrunch earlier this week, the company’s various branded products simply weren’t selling as well as expected. “The consumers have a bit of a movie fatigue and are just interested in a deeper experience,” the executive says. The company says the numbers weren’t make or break, but it was enough to prompt a serious bit of soul-searching on the part of the company’s higher-ups.

With the smaller staff comes a smaller product output. This year, the company will likely return to its earlier roadmap of one to two products a year. That means that a majority of the 10 to 15 product prototypes the company has in development at a given time will likely be put on the back burner.

This year also marks the beginning of a major pivot for the company, as it moves away from the branded offerings that put it on the map for mainstream consumers and pours more of its remaining resources into education. It’s a risky move from the outside. The world of STEM-learning robotics is a relatively new, but highly competitive one, with several startups and big-name companies like LEGO and Fisher-Price all vying for a slice of the pie.

But Berberian believes that Sphero has made significant inroads since it began aggressively targeting school curricula some five years back. The startup has invested millions in the category and has made its way into the hands of 1.3 million kids across 20,000 schools, by his count.

He also notes that while its branded product lines performed below expectations, the company’s own products outperformed what was anticipated. “Especially those that have a STEM core message,” says Berberian. “They were selling faster than the Star Wars products with a Star Wars movie out there, with virtually no marketing. Consumers are really interested in buying those products that have a deeper, richer experience that can help their child understand these 21st century skills.”

The all-in approach to education also appears to be about image. Berberian notes that Sphero never envisioned itself as a toy company, in spite of what it seemed like from the outside. And while he maintains that the Disney deal was the right one at the time, it may have pulled too much of Sphero’s resources from its prime directive of offering an engaging and accessibly programmable robotics platform.

“The deal with Disney was absolutely the right decision at the time,” he explains. “It elevated our brand, we got a lot of international and national coverage and delivered a great experience. The challenge is that everyone saw us as a toy company, making these mainstream toys. It turns out that the products were really popular and well received, but there’s still this risk in the consumer’s mind that if it’s called a toy, then it must not be of lasting value.”

This doesn’t mean that the company is abandoning that entertainment aspect. While the executive is careful not to tip his hand too much, he offers a little insight into a potential way forward in that regard. Berberian outlines a model similar to video game development, where partners do much of the heavy lifting for product design.

“If we continue to make some really cool toys,“ he explains, “that would be the model that it would be under, where we follow the model that has really worked for these high-cost development projects.”

Given the hardware and software platforms the company has developed with the intent of offering a flexible, programmable platform, such deals could make sense for the company moving forward. But Sphero’s not ready to announce anything just yet. From the outside, at least, it seems the company will require more time to get its ducks in a row before it takes that next big leap.

source: TechCrunch

Usually, when you fall in love with a cool gadget depicted in the latest science fiction blockbuster, the best you can hope for is that maybe, maybe, some gifted entrepreneur will be inspired to bring it to life in the years to come.

For the most part, that’ll be true of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (coming this December, as if you hadn’t already marked your calendar). As far as I know, you won’t be able to bring home a real-life spaceship or light saber — but you can buy your own BB-8 droid, thanks to a collaboration between Disney and robotics startup Sphero.

To be clear, this BB-8 isn’t as big as the one depicted on-screen, and it probably won’t be quite as smart or independent. But hey, it’s a Star Wars droid that you can control from your smartphone or tablet, which is pretty freaking cool.

When Sphero’s Chief Creative Officer Rob Maigret demonstrated the BB-8 for me, he used his iPhone like a remote control, rolling the droid around the room. He also used his iPhone to give it voice commands — for example, telling it to go on patrol. (At that point it started moving around the room on its own, looking for enemies.) And through his iPhone camera, we could actually watch BB-8 broadcast holographic messages recorded by other users — perhaps inevitably, the message riffed on the “Help me, Obi-Wan scene” from the original Star Wars.

Maigret said that underneath the hood, BB-8 uses much of the same technology as Sphero’s existing robotic ball, but with upgrades like a new inductive charging system. (In other words, you don’t have to plug in the BB-8 to charge it. You just place it on its stand.) And of course it has the movie droid’s distinctive and weirdly endearing shape — a robotic head floating above a rotating ball.

Sphero’s BB-8 will be launching tomorrow, on “Force Friday,” and will retail for $150. That may be a little steep for a toy, but as Maigret put it, “We think of it as more of a droid than an actual toy. It’s not a disposable piece of plastic. This is a piece of technology. Other Sphero products have constant iteration, and this will be the same thing. It will constantly get better.” (For one thing, he said BB-8 will actually adapt to your personality over time.)

Maigret said the partnership started about 18 months ago, when Sphero was part of the Disney Accelerator. Disney CEO Bob Iger heard about the startup and became a mentor, eventually tasking the team with recreating the BB-8 from the film.

Maigret, formerly an executive at Disney Interactive, is also a mentor at the Disney Accelerator, and that’s how he joined Sphero. The startup’s vision, he said, is to create “connected entertainment robots.” By connected, he means “connected to us, connected to the Internet, they’re aware, and their fundamental purpose is to entertain us and to relate to us.” Among other things, these robots can become devices for storytelling and media consumption, he said.

In the case of BB-8, he talked about how Sphero actually created animated scenes that it wanted the droid to act out. Once those scenes were refined, the team “pumped them into the hardware,” turning animated storyboards into physical behavior.

Over time, Maigret predicted that users will be able to program their own custom BB-8 actions (though not necessarily with official support from Disney or Sphero).

“The thing is, it’s a robot, it’s a droid — and people will figure out how to hack it,” he said. “We think that’s a good thing. We don’t have a kit that comes out on day one for it, but people will put two and two together.”

Want to see BB-8 in action? Maigret also did an on-camera demo with TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney, which you can watch above. And you can learn more about BB-8 here.


source: TechCrunch

While Sphero has released a whole lineup of robotic, Internet-connected toys, it remains best-known for its BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Today it’s launching its next Disney tie-in — Ultimate Lightning McQueen.

This is a car that you can control from your iPhone or Android, based on the Owen Wilson-voiced character from Pixar’s Cars franchise. (Cars 3 is coming out on June 16.) Ultimate Lightning McQueen is available today for a price of $299.

“As our partnership with Disney has evolved, we’ve been able to start to look at further properties within the Disney portfolio,” explained Product Manager Jenica Watts. (Sphero’s initial connection to Disney was as part of the Disney Accelerator.) “One of the teams had the opportunity to build an amazing, lifelike Lightning McQueen.”

Star Wars and Sphero were a match made in heaven. The company had spent a few years in relative startup obscurity when Disney came along with the design for a new droid debuting in the upcoming trilogy. The resulting BB-8 remote control device changed the company’s fortunes overnight. With The Last Jedi a few months away, the companies are looking to recapture the magic with another brand new, spherical droid and the return of an all-time Star Wars classic.

Once again, Sphero is offering us the first long look at a droid set to debut in a new film. Until now, BB-9E’s only appearance was on some Lego Star Wars: Episode VIII packaging that leaked out early. The new droid looks a bit like the adorable BB-8 gone over to the Dark Side. As the naming convention implies, the robot comes from the same astromech series as BB-8 — albeit with a black paint job to suit the needs of the First Order and a conical head similar to the R5 droid.

Hardware startup Misty Robotics has a daunting task ahead of it. The Boulder-based company is working on a robot aimed at mainstream consumers for employment in the home and office. But Misty certainly has a solid foundation, as a spinoff of robotic toy maker Sphero, coupled with an $11.5 million Series A led by Venrock and Foundry Group.

The new company employs about half a dozen former Sphero ex-pats, including co-founder Ian Bernstein, who will be Misty’s Head of Product. Bernstein and team have been working on the seeds of Misty’s first product under the Sphero banner for roughly a year and a half, ultimately opting to spin it off into a new company, given its vastly different — and decidedly more ambitious — goals.

“At some point it just made sense for Sphero to focus on connected play,” Bernstein tells TechCrunch. “And it would make sense to spin off a company so we can raise more money and go bigger and faster on this idea of an autonomous robotic being in the home and office.”

Founded as Orbotix in 2010, Sphero has seen rapid growth in the past several years as it’s transformed itself from a niche maker of a smartphone-controlled robotic ball into a full-fledged Disney co-conspirator. The company rocketed to success when its first product became the basis of the remote-controlled BB-8, a wildly successful Star Wars tie-in. Since then, the partnership has produced new Cars and Spider-Man toys.

But Misty’s offering is something else entirely. The company isn’t ready to reveal much in the way of details at this early stage, except to say that it’s planting the seeds for more mainstream devices. It’s understandable, of course, that it’s fairly modest in its projections. Countless companies have tried to bring consumer robotics to the home, but have largely failed through some combination of half-baked technologies and impossible-to-meet consumer expectations.

For a robot to succeed in the home, it has to be affordable, capable and serve some task that people either can’t or simply don’t want to perform. Only iRobot’s Roomba has come close. The product has found success, but even so, its one-note functionality feels underwhelming compared to the expectations science-fiction has been feeding us for decades. But products like it and Amazon’s Echo are slowly opening the door to more technology in the home. Though Misty tells me it believes a truly mainstream consumer robot is still “several years” away.

“We don’t believe it’s time for a mainstream robot,” says CEO Tim Enwall, who also founded Google-owned home automation company Revolv. “We don’t believe there [is currently] a market for it. What we do believe is that there will be a robot in everyone’s home and office and there is a progression to that process. And that progression, like every other technology we’ve ever adopted as humans, doesn’t start with a mainstream market. It starts with an innovator market.”

Misty’s first several products will be targeted at the hobbyist/maker market — something more akin to where desktop 3D printing and drones have been for the past decade. From there, however, it hopes to build toward something more substantial, both through acceptance among early adopters and a fine-tuning of the multi-purpose robot’s functionality. But, adds Enwall, “even the first-generation of product will embody the principles required for putting a robot in everyone’s home and office. It’s just that this first version will be targeted at innovators.”

The company has released the above promotional image, which highlights an early prototype. At the very least, it appears to point to something more biologically influenced that the Roomba’s hockey puck shape. Whether it takes the form of a humanoid robot, an animal or something else entirely, remains to be seen.

Though Misty’s Sphero experience does point to a company that understands the value of imbuing a product with personality. “We’ve learned a lot,” says Bernstein. “From the progression of starting to add personality in Sphero 2.0, to the Disney deal, [we’ve learned] the power of creating a robot that’s…more of a character.”

Misty’s first product is set to hit the market next year.

source: TechCrunch

Recent Sphero spinoff Misty Robotics brought a decidedly non-consumer-focused device to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this week. The Misty I Developer Edition is the first baby step for a startup with even grander ambitions than the one that gave birth to it. In June, the company announced a $11.5 million Series A led by Venrock and Foundry Group to aide in its plans to build a mainstream household robot with a much broader skillset than the industry leading Roomba.

An early attempt at that will arrive later this year, in the form of Misty II, a more highly polished and commercially minded version of the company’s robotic’s platform. For now, however, its focus is far more narrow, with plans to court developers, as it works to build something more suitable for the home market.

Misty I Developer Edition is sort of the Apple I to the Misty II’s Apple II. There will likely be a developer version of the II, but the company’s forgoing the consumer version of the I. It’s all understandably a little convoluted a first glance, but the startup’s working on getting its sea legs, as it prepares for the seemingly impossible: a home robot that can do it all. In a briefing in a hotel suite at CES this week, CEO Tim Enwall and Head of Product Ian Bernstein laid out a fairly grandiose roadmap for me.

Watch this:Misty Robotics // Robothon Recap

It’s a ten-year plan, according to Enwall, and the startup’s investors have apparently agreed to that extremely long runway. After all, someone has to bring robots into the mainstream, right? So why not Misty? Bernstein was the founder and CTO of Sphero, which quickly moved from remote control ball to Disney darling, and Enwall headed up Revolv, which ultimately got sucked up into Google/Nest.

There’s a small army of Misty I’s in the hotel suite when we meet the team. Bernstein puts one on the floor and fires it up. It has the body type of ET: The Extraterrestrial, balanced on four wheels and constructed out a black plastic exoskeleton, that’s maybe a touch more Xenomorph. As Misty (referred to primarily as a “she” by her creators) fires up, a pair of dots inside two brackets simulate some semblance of eyes on what resembles a blue screen of death.

When fully operational, the eyes are a bit more lifelike, though still early stages. There’s nothing here akin to the animated personality Anki has developed for Cozmo by assembling a team of animators from places like Pixar and Dreamworks. In fact, much about this first Misty model is rudimentary, and that’s kind of the point. The robot fills a similar role as Willow Garage’s bygone Turtlebot or iRobot’s Create, offering developers a way to build ideas on a robotics platform.

It’s a far more limited offering, however. Enwall tells me that it takes his team four to six hours to build a unit, totaling around five to ten units a week. It’s not exactly a sound business model in the long term. Instead, the company will be vetting potential developers through its online platform, and hopefully building up an ecosystem of software ahead of the Misty II’s launch.

Bernstein walks us through some of the quick and dirty features early developers have programmed in at a recent hackathon. In the most compelling demo, Misty I uses her on-board camera and facial recognition to detect people. When she sees them, she zips back on her wheels as if startled. It’s a far cry from the security and smart home connectivity planned for its already announced successor, but it’s a start.

source: TechCrunch

Sphero continues its partnership with Disney today, with the launch of a new toy based on the Marvel superhero Spider-Man. But where BB-8 and Lightning McQueen could move around the room, Spider-Man is more stationary — his real power involves holding conversations.

The simplest thing this Spider-Man can do is tell jokes — he seems to have an infinite simply of eye-rollers. If you just ask him to chat, he’ll start a conversation about random topics like school or dating. And as Sphero co-founder and Chief Software Architect Adam Wilson put it, he’s also “a storyteller,” describing his adventures to kids and asking them to participate in key moments.

You can see a few of my interactions with Spider-Man in the video above. Users are encouraged to try out different prompts and discover new modes of interaction — though there were plenty of times where Spider-Man would answer a different question from the one I asked, or he would just sit there silently.

The toy includes expressive LCD eyes, a microphone, a speaker and an accelerometer — so he’ll offer enthusiastic commentary if you pick him up and pretend to fight with him. There’s even an infrared sensor, allowing Spider-Man to go into “guard mode,” warning off any intruders who enter his owner’s bedroom.

Aside from using third-party speech recognition technology, Wilson said Spider-Man’s conversational engine was built “from scratch” — in essence, he’s “a full Android device” inside a superhero-shaped toy. (While your main interactions will be through voice, you’ll also need either an iOS or an Android app to control him.)

Wilson also emphasized the importance of privacy and security. He said Spider-Man is only listening when the spider on his chest lights up, and the user’s voice is never stored or shared. (The security measures are certified by AppliedTrust.)

It’s worth noting that while Spider-Man’s launch is timed to just a few weeks before the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 7, he isn’t supposed to represent the movie version of the character, and he’s not voiced by Homecoming actor Tom Holland. (The fact that Homecoming will be distributed by Sony Pictures, not Disney, may have something to do with the toy’s lack of movie ties.) Still, Wilson said this Spider-Man comes with more than “100 comic books worth of content” and will also offer “tons of Easter Eggs.”

As for price, the toy costs $149.99.

Over the past few years, Disney’s accelerator classes have been transitioning away from what was once a roughly standard early-stage growth framework. Rather than the “adopt-a-company” models prevalent among most accelerators, it has been leaning hard into how it can create mutually beneficial relationships with companies that run the gamut from well-established to really just beginning.

The latest class, announced today, really shows how far the model has evolved beyond its early partnerships with Techstars. The press release that came along with the list rightly calls out Sphero as a success story from its last batch. The little-robot-company-that-could had been making a very cool controllable ball for a while but had struggled to really latch into the customer consciousness.

Disney was able to lend its IP (as well as senior executive and storyteller staff) to the company — a relationship that resulted in the smash hit BB-8 bot.

That mashing together of unique talent with Disney’s storytelling, IP, incredibly horizontal org and deep executive talent pool as advisers makes its accelerator one of the more unique programs operating in the startup space. Especially now that it is solidly differentiating its approach from the rest of the pack.

Some of the opportunities are obvious. The VOID is one of a small group of companies making a strong go at creating VR experiences in physical anchor spaces – an effort to drive traffic and create a movie-like experience. Unlike most of VR, this sector is having some kind of commercial success. That experience plus Disney IP seems like an interesting bet.

The aXiomatic selection is smart because ESPN is a hop and a skip away from esports. Epicbeing included here just means an embarrassment of riches — it’s got a great thing going already but there’s a lot of plussing that could happen.

Others are more oblique – Brit + Co is a media and goods company, and Hoodline is a hyper-local news and analysis company. But given that I saw a Hoodline mentioned on a local ABC affiliate a few weeks back, I think I can see where that is going.

(Hoodline was co-founded by former TechCrunch co-editor Eric Eldon, but he wouldn’t tell me what they’re up to yet. Too much media training probably.)

I’m very interested to see how some of the companies in this eclectic grouping will capitalize on the relationship with Disney. Here’s the full group of companies this batch (descriptions are Disney’s).

Ambidio

An innovative sound company that creates a continuous sound field with a sense of depth and dimension through any device with stereo speakers, bringing an immersive sound experience to everyone.

aXiomatic

A broad-based esports company built by leading sports team owners with ownership interests in esports teams and esports content distribution. The company has a majority stake in Team Liquid, a top esports team in the US and Europe with 60 pro players, coaches, and analysts competing in nine games as well as a minority stake in Super League Gaming.

Brit + Co

A digital media company that inspires, educates and entertains real women with a creative spirit. Through inspirational content, online classes, and products, Brit + Co enables their audience of over 125 million to use creativity to shape their best lives.

Epic Games

Creators of Unreal Engine technology, which is used by millions of developers to ship visually stunning, high-quality games and experiences across PC, console, mobile, VR and AR platforms. Developers also choose Epic’s Unreal Engine for cinematic production, visualization, design and simulation. Epic is known for creating the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series of games, as well as newer titles such as Fortnite, Paragon and Robo Recall.

Hoodline

A local news and content discovery platform, that uses machine learning to distribute geotagged and relevant content from hundreds of media partners into websites or mobile apps. Hoodline also analyzes data sets to unlock insights for businesses and media companies.

Kahoot!

A game-based learning platform with more than 50 million monthly active users in 180 countries. Kahoot! makes it easy to create, discover, play, and share fun learning games in minutes—for any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages.

ProductionPro

A tool for storytellers and creators focused on improving creative collaboration in Film, TV, and Theatre production. ProductionPro pulls scripts, research, designs, and continuity together to empower creative decision-making.

ReplyYes

A frictionless e-commerce over mobile messaging experience: customers simply reply “YES” to buy the product and have it delivered.

Samba TV

A data and analytics company providing essential television insights by leveraging a source of real-time, opt-in viewership data across broadcast, cable TV, OTT, and digital media. Through software integrations with smart TV manufacturers, Samba recognizes content and associated viewership patterns making TV audiences more addressable and measurable while helping marketers activate cross-screen campaigns and maximize their impact.

Savioke

A robotics company that develops and deploys autonomous indoor delivery robots that work alongside people in busy environments such as hotels, logistics facilities, and high-rise apartment buildings. The company’s flagship product, Relay, is an autonomous delivery robot that is already installed in dozens of hotels worldwide.

The VOID

A location-based entertainment company that fully immerses guests in virtual experiences with friends and family, engaging all of their senses. The VOID combines interactive sets, virtual reality, real-time effects, and state of the art technology to bring guests into their experience.

source: TechCrunch

Scientists have looked into the feasibility of lovable droids like BB-8 and R2-D2, and find they're good for more than just pushing a plot forward.

BB-8 poses with its best side front. Lucasfilm

If you ever find yourself in dicey situations like those faced by Poe Dameron and Han Solo, you might find a series of high-pitched beeps and tones like trusty robot R2-D2's helpful.

That's the conclusion of Robin Murphy, Texas A&M University professor of computer science and engineering.

Murphy considered whether the beloved robots R2-D2 and BB-8 from the Star Wars universe would be feasible in real life and found the Hollywood mechs actually have some practical features beyond just advancing an often convoluted narrative, especially when it comes to communication. She published her findings Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics.

"The beeps and whistles project mental state, e.g., disagreement with whatever C3PO is nattering about, disapproval of a main character's dubious decision, and frustration at being thwarted in its job of helping the protagonist save the world," Murphy explains. "In real life, (roboticist) Robin Read has found that the types of beeps and whistles that facilitate the rebel-droid interaction can be effectively used by real robots in engaging children and adults."

But when it comes to getting around, the design of BB-8 turns out to be less realistic, especially for navigating the sands of Jakku as seen in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

"Anyone who has driven a car on a beach knows how quickly wheels can become buried in the sand and spin in place," Murphy writes, going on to cite the work of other scientists like Georgia Tech's Dan Goldman, who performed experiments with the Sphero BB-8 toy on sand to see how it did.

You can see one such experiment in the video below. While Murphy acknowledges a toy is different from an actual robot, it still demonstrates how BB-8 was clearly conceived more for a particular storyline than an actual setting.

Still, Murphy says Star Wars droids have had a very real influence on real-world robotics, pointing out that NASA's personal satellite assistant was inspired in part by Luke Skywalker's lightsaber training droid and Robonaut 2 aboard the International Space Station bears a certain resemblance to C3PO.

Murphy fails to chime in on the potential influence of some of the more effective battle droids, like the freaky Droidekas from "The Phantom Menace."

No worries, though. I think Elon Musk may have some thoughts on the risks of combining those type of droids with artificial intelligence that we can all heed instead.

source:CNet