This is a very cool story of how a young person with a dream created an awesome Robot which takes a bit of AR game play and Robotics to create a fun interactive experience that now has the attention of both Amazon and Apple. Silas Adekunle, who was born in Nigera, took his interest in science and technology from a young age to learn about Robotics and now sits as the CEO of his own Robotics company at Reach Robotics in the UK. Reach Robotics has created Spider bot called MekaMon V2 that uses an AR interface to control the bot where the player can create battles with other bot uses. The graphics look very cool and the bot movement seems smooth. You can even program the bot using Apple's Swift programming language. Reach Robotics did recently announce it has raised 10mil in funding, but now it has partnered with Amazon and Apple where they are selling the bots for $250 each. That does seem a bit much, since it would take $500 for a two person experience, but maybe there will be discounts for the holidays. Personally, having some sort of Switch interaction would be even cooler.
Considering some of the bad news in the Robotics news lately where some companies have closed shop, it is refreshing to see someone like Silas and Reach Robotics have some success. I certainly wish they even greater success for the New Year.
MekaMon Home page:
Reach Robitcs
Here is an article from CNBC:
Video of the bot in action: