Here comes Xachi - an iPhone controlled robotic toy

 GetRobo believes that the combination of smartphones and robots is going to be one of the biggest trends in 2011. (In Japan, some people call it the "Sumaho-robo" - short for "smart phone robots.") There's already the quadrotor helicopter AR.Drone on the market, and a robotic ball Sphero that was announced at this year's CES.

 Another product slated to come out later this year is Xachi (pronounced Zachi) Pet  which is being developed by Taptic Toys . This first product by the company targets the kids/tween market but the technology has a lot of potential for various types of products in the future.

 GetRobo interviewed Taptic Toys President David Cann (D) and Greg Munson (G) who's in charge of business development to learn about Xachi and their company. Also, although we did not talk about it in the interview below, they've just come out with a game for your iOS device called Xachi Command, which is a great marketing strategy that will lead to the launch of the furrier friend. 

 
     (Photo: Xachi Pets)
 
Q. Please tell us about your company, Taptic Toys. 
 
D) We started in 2009 after Apple announced that people could create third party hardware for the iPhone and iPod touch. Our other co-founder Romina (Espinosa) thought it would be great to have a toy that can connect to the iPhone. A Furby-type toy, but something that people could interact with. Every kid wants to have an iPhone or iPod touch for Christmas. So we thought if we could integrate and connect the cool games and abilities of the phone with the actual physical toy, we could have a unique product that kids would love.  
  So I brought in my other friends Marc (DeVidts) and Greg. Marc is a great hardware designer and I do software so we formed a company together and we’ve been working on it. We made a prototype in 6 months and went to the Toy Fair in New York in Feb. 2010. We’re now in the manufacturing stage.
 
Q. When is your product coming out?
 
D) Sometime in the first half of this year. 
 
Q. How does it work and what’s it going to do?
 

G) Xachi is a pet/toy that is controlled by your iOS device - the iPhone, iPod touch (except the original 2007 version which didn't have Bluetooth) and the iPad. The main goal with Xachi is to keep it happy and healthy. You can keep it healthy with virtual food. You throw the food using augmented reality from your iPhone to Xachi virtually over the video camera feed. And Xachi will wiggle when it eats a piece of fruit or something like that.
 And the way to keep Xachi happy is by playing games with it. And this is one of the coolest feature and the more innovative feature that things like Furby and Tamagotchi didn’t do that well. We’ve got a whole slew of games that we’ve written for the first launch of Xachi that involves the iPhone interacting with the robot.
 For example, there are accelerometers inside Xachi - just like there is one on the iPhone - and you can use Xachi’s accelerometers to control the iPhone’s accelerometers. So instead of using your iPhone to control the game inside the iPhone, you can use the Xachi. Xachi knows if it’s upside down, being spun around, sideways, etc. and that can communicate back to the iOS device.
 Another way to interact with Xachi is through the screen. Xachi has a speaker onboard that can make sounds, like purring and excited noises that enhance the whole experience. Also there will be 1-2 motor(s) that move two of the three legs so Xachi can dance and wiggle.
 

(Photo: Xachi can dance)

D) What’s great is that it’s all controlled by the iPhone so we can actually send updates to the toy. We can send down new games and sounds, onboard games to play on the toy itself. So lot’s of possibilities there. A next generation type of experience – keep connected to the cloud and keep updating. 
 
Q. Who are your target customers and how much is it going to cost?
 
G) Certainly kids and tweens, which is exciting because they are already using iPhones and iPod Touches. The market is huge. There has been over 120 Million iOS devices sold and still more kids want to own an iOS device. Already, 65 percent of all iPod touch users were under 17.
 That said, there’s a certain cool factor to the toy that we think will work well for older users as well.
 
D) Our target is about 40 U.S. dollars. We’re going to launch in the U.S. first, but we want to expand worldwide of course. 
 
Q. What is the connection method between the iPhone and Xachi?
 
D) It’s Bluetooth. What’s great about the Bluetooth setup is that you can take it anywhere. You can take it to your friend’s house, to the grocery store or play with it inside your car. You don’t have to worry about setting up a WiFi network.   When you’re like 8 years old, you don’ know how to set that kind of thing up. That’s why we think Bluetooth is the solution. Bluetooth is mobile for kids.
 
G) It’s been a little bit of a challenge to get Bluetooth and Xachi to communicate, but Marc has masterfully figured out how to seamlessly interact the toy with the iPhone and stream data and information back and forth. 
 
Q. What was the technical challenge?
 
D) One of the unique issues we have is real-time communication. When you are just streaming music, you can have a slight delay but what we’re doing is like video games over the Internet. You have to figure the latency time for the controller. We have to get the latency time under 50 milliseconds.
 
G) One of the cool things about being able to discover how to solve this Bluetooth communication problem is that it has opened doors for us to opportunities other than toys too. For example, Marc made an LED suit that can be controlled through his iPhone to stream patterns over his body. He’s been a hit at parties. In the future, we can be developing mobile flash card devices.
 
Q. Would you be interested in licensing this technology to other companies?
 
G) That would be something we would entertain. Right now we’re trying to get work done for Xachi and want Xachi to be super successful. But we certainly want to grow the company into sort of the interface between mobile and hardware. It’s a pretty exciting space to be in. 
 
Q. How did you get authorization from Apple to do this kind of work? And is Apple going to promote your product?
 
D) You have to meet Apple’s high-quality standards to participate– just like making an accessory that can be plugged into the iPhone, - for example the charger. It’s called the MFi program. It gives you a seal of approval. You can use the logo so that people will know that’s it’s made to work with the iOS device.
  In regards to promotion, hopefully they will promote it in the iPhone stores because our product is unique, but there is no guarantee. That’s separate.
 
Q. Did you ever consider doing this with the Android phone?
 
D) Yes, we thought about that of course. But what we’ve seen so far is that the kids don’t have Android phones. A lot of kids have iPod touches. Teenagers have iPhones. But there’s no reason in the future that we couldn’t look at (the Android platform) when the Android phones become more popular. 
 
Q. Is there any difference between the iOS and the Android in terms of using them as a robotic control platform?
 
D) Android opened its platform and made it possible for hackers to get into the guts of the machine and actually do more advanced things. But with the iPhone you have to go through Apple and make a robust product. Android is much better for hackers, but we’re developing a consumer product here. 
 
Q. It seems like the technology is fit to make movie character toys – like the monsters from Monsters Inc.
 
D) Absolutely a possibility in the future. There’s WALL-E too. It would be great for this kind of thing. So we’ll be looking at licensing deals in the future. Right now we’re just trying to get our first products out the door.
    
G) That reminds me that the other cool feature about Xachi is that it’s educational. We’ve actually developed some prototype games that can be played utilizing the screen. Instead of having the kids sit down with a book, you could quiz kids on spelling and math and they can learn with a little friend.
 

Comments

[tech]

Nice read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he just bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thank you for lunch!

[Monster Truck Nitro 3]

Another thing that people really don't need just to make money, that being said I'm sure it will be very popular and make a lot of money.