Sony's new music player Rolly

Sony announced it's new music player Rolly. It will hit the market in Japan on Sept. 29. The concept is similar to  miuro, but Rolly is smaller. And whereas miuro is autonomous and more "robotic" - it can follow you around from room to room and prevent itself from falling off from tables etc. - what Rolly basically does is show some cool movements that match the music.

According to an article on ITpro, Rolly was developed by some of the people that used to work on the AIBO at Sony. Although when they started talking about developing a new music player utilizing some AIBO technologies, they didn't know that AIBO was going to be discontinued. They started working on it seriously about a year and a half ago teaming up with the audio group.

The goal was to create a music player that would surprise people because of the sound quality coming out from something that is so small. The team put a lot of effort in figuring out the best balance between sound and motion - a bigger speaker meant better sound but less space for motors which were also important for interesting movements. AIBO's technology was utilized in creating quick but smooth and quiet movements so that they don't interfere with the music. The developers think that although Rolly is not a pet like AIBO, people will feel empathy for the player due to its movements.

Sony doesn't plan on doing big advertising on TV for this new product. The company is planning on using its blog and other word of mouth marketing strategies to sell Rolly.

According to Sony's press release, Rolly weighs 300g, battery life is about 4 hours with sound and motion, 3.5 hours when using Bluetooth, comes with 1GB flash memory. Price is expected to be around 40,000 yen ($350).

More photos and videos on ROBOT WATCH. You can see how you can control the volume and select songs by turning the wheels.

   

 

Comments

[MobilePhones]

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