The coolest new startup from Africa! Robonica.com
by Stii
Who says there is no cool African startups? Hands up? Here is one of the coolest! One that not only has an awesome product, but a rock solid business model! A friend of mine contacted me this morning to show off his new venture and job in Pretoria. Bastard… (I’m jealous, okay?!) It is a comapany called Robonica and they’re developing robots and robotic games for a robot called Robonii. They’ve received cool funding (from who or where I don’t know yet) to build these robots and robotic games. HOW COOL IS THAT!
Now this is not exactly new. Think of Robosapien and Lego Mindstorm. This just looks a lot more exciting and fun! It is a cross between Robot Wars and the above mentioned, brought to the consumer market.
Basically, you buy this cool little Starwars look-a-like robot and get control center software which allows you to program the robot. You then set up challenges in you environment and program the bot to either do certain obstacles or you can have a laser fight with other robots. *drool* It will also extend to an online community, but I’m not 100% sure how that is going to work! You can download some specifications in PDF format over here.
They’re launching the product later this year in New York, so watch this space. I’ll try get more info in the meantime!
I want one and I want one now, it’s, er, for my son…
Looks good :)
Now if only they would host Robot Wars in SA. That would be nice…
~ Wogan
Stii I must say I am totally lost and I dont get anything ;). maybe its because I just got up after sleeping at 3:30am.
I will come back later to read
This article ahcieved exactly what I wanted it to achieve.
That’s very cool!
Thanks Stii (double eye) for talking about Robonii (double eye) :)
What you mean? Unique .. this is the only robot that has more than just a personality, reprogrammable, etc. You can play games (single & multi user) with it. Shooting other robots, teams against/with each other. And a web interface too.
Very, very cool. Thanks for pointing this one out Stii. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords… :)
sounds nice
[...] games, robonica, robonii, robotics, startup — Stii @ 7:53 am A while ago I wrote about Robonica, the coolest African startup. Here is a great video to give you a short and sweet intro to what it can do. I want [...]