Android powered DragonBot toy learns from the cloud

Children have always loved toys and enjoy playing with them. Traditionally, toys have meant nothing more than a way to pass time and encourage the imagination of kids. Toys today however, do not mean stuffed bears or battery operated animals anymore. Today’s toys want to encourage and stimulate the child and a robot is the best way to do that.

Kombusto the Android toy

Dragonbot is the latest robot developed by the laboratories of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern and Harvard. The Dragonbot externally resembles a stuffed toy but with a change. It actually possesses a brain i.e. it has an Android system in its head. The entire toy is controlled by the Android operating system. This Dragonbot toy has been named Kombusto.

The Dragonbot Kombusto has a frontal camera which enables it to gain visual inputs and thereby making it very interactive. Therefore, now children can interact and communicate with the Dragonbot to learn things. There is also a microphone for sound input and speakers for output. This entire input output system makes the Dragonbot almost human like.

The Dragonbot is more than being a mere input output system. This toy is actually responsive and reactive in a smart expressive. Instead of a glassy stare that other toys usually have, this one actually has a display screen instead of the eyes. This display screen is controlled by the Android system itself. Thus the Dragonbot takes in all the input and can literally ‘express’ its output through the display. Therefore, the Android system makes it the most expressive toy of all times because the eyes are nothing but an Android display.

This toy is not stationary but can actually move. The toy takes the form of a dragon and hence its name. The limbs and body of the dragon are actually mobile. They are in fact controlled by the Android system itself.

One of the best features of the Dragonbot is the fact that it is connected through cloud. This means that the toy can actually garner information from a multitude of other Dragonbot toys in order to gather knowledge. Therefore, children can learn from what other children are learning. This knowledge can be used by the Dragonbot to teach the kids. The cloud obviously needs internet connection, which Kombusto gets by way of wi-fi or a 3G or 4G spectrum.

Since, Kombusto has an Android operating system; you can download an app from the market to remotely control the toy. This too is because of the presence of cloud. If one removes the phone from the toy or vice versa the interaction does not stop. The phone in fact presents a virtual version of this robotic toy which too is interactive. This virtual Kombusto can be controlled from the tablet version of the Android too.

Finally, this toy is supposed to be priced under a $1000 which is very reasonable for what it offers; a robotic, interactive, cloud connected, Android based toy that helps the learning process. This toy is one of the first of its kind in terms of interactions between human beings and robots.

Source: mobilemag