Hands-On with Hasbro’s Nexus S Powered Robots at Google I/O

Our team was lucky enough to stumble into some cute little robots while roaming around at Google I/O today. What we have here is a little hands-on video of Hasbro’s Robot Toys that are being powered by a Google Nexus S. These robots are walking around at will, no talking yet though. Hasbro and Google have been working hard to get these little guys working together so we got a little hands-on time until one has a little “accident”.

What they have done is built a body-like dock that is self powered with its own battery that connects to the Nexus S via bluetooth. They have integrated servo’s for movement and motion. What makes this unique is they are not just reacting to a few commands to walk around. They are observing the environment using the front facing camera and different phone sensors and the touchscreen. Then actually connect to Google’s new facial and object recognition platform via the Google Cloud and this is how they react to surroundings and walk towards or away from objects. Pretty neat idea.

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You can shake them to make them dizzy, or rub the touchscreen to make them happy. For now Hasbro stuck to simple Male and Female robots but we expect more to come. They can even take a photo using the front facing camera if needed, recognize something they don’t like and they will try to run away but might not get very far if they aren’t as fast as the robot in our hands-on. Poor guy just didn’t have the legs to finish the race, Plop! For now these are only prototypes and are a work in progress, in case you didn’t notice by the video or my comments above. Check out the video below and make sure you watch to the end.