BotJunkie is merging with Automaton to form the best robotics blog on the Net! Please continue
following our stories at our new home and update your RSS reader with our new feed. See you there!

Sony Patents Video Game Robot

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Saturday, 21 of March , 2009 at 2:16 am

Sony Robot

Sony may be trying to mix things up a little bit in the video game world by introducing a robot that would like to play a game with you. A physical robot, that is… A video game accessory, of sorts. Details are pretty scarce, but the patent (there’s not even a concept yet) does include a camera, a microphone, some kind of object detection, and a display. And in the picture from the patent, it’s got little wheely looking things.

We’ll have to see how Sony envisions the robot working with the game system… The problem might be that the user would have to split attention between the robot and the game, or if not, then you’ve got a potentially expensive peripheral sitting around most of the time.

As Kotaku points out, Nintendo already tried this kind of thing back in 1985 with a robot peripheral called R.O.B… More, after the jump.

ROB

Looking at it objectively, R.O.B. is a pretty lame robot. It only worked with two games (two awful games, from what I’ve read), and was limited to two axes of movement. While R.O.B.’s head stayed fixed toward the screen (receiving optical commands), his torso could pivot and his arms could move up and down to interact in an extremely limited way with an extremely limited set of accessories that were related to what was going on in the game in an extremely tenuous manner. And it was really damn slow. But apparently, the reason that Nintendo introduced R.O.B. was to make something cool to renew faith in video games after the 1983 crash. See? Robots ARE cool! Even sucky ones!

[ Siliconera ] VIA [ Kotaku ]

Comments (9)

Category: Toys

9 Comments

Comment by nintendo video games

Made Monday, 27 of April , 2009 at 3:07 am

it was a good post…i like it!

Comment by Pikmintaro

Made Thursday, 9 of July , 2009 at 6:21 pm

W00t ROB! he is a character in Super Smash Bros Brawl if you didn’t know but he can shoot lasers out of his eyes in it rofl

Comment by Carpet Tiles ยท

Made Thursday, 4 of November , 2010 at 12:31 am

video games can be very addicting that is why sometimes i limit myself from playing too much of it ”

Comment by RFID Chip

Made Friday, 3 of December , 2010 at 7:46 am

when it comes to video games, i enjoy playing those that have very nice graphics and story like Plantz and Zombies ~.,

Comment by Ikuta Huong

Made Wednesday, 23 of November , 2011 at 11:42 pm

What a lovely weblog. I will definitely be back again. Please sustain writing!

Comment by Kozaki Mustang

Made Thursday, 8 of December , 2011 at 2:26 pm

My husband and i ended up being joyful Michael could deal with his inquiry out of the ideas he was given from your very own site. It’s not at all simplistic just to happen to be releasing ideas which often many others could have been trying to sell. And now we know we now have you to be grateful to because of that. The entire illustrations you have made, the simple blog navigation, the friendships you give support to foster – it’s got most impressive, and it is facilitating our son and our family understand this article is satisfying, and that is exceptionally vital. Thanks for the whole lot!

Comment by 500 rublei

Made Sunday, 11 of December , 2011 at 10:54 pm

I truly admire everything you web site in correct here, highly informative and sensible. 1 problem, I am running Opera on Linux and some with the content material are just a little wonky. I realize it is not a popular, but it is nonetheless something to watch out for. Just giving you a manages.

Comment by Tamra Mauleon

Made Thursday, 15 of December , 2011 at 12:40 pm

Wohh exactly what I was searching for, thanks for posting.

Comment by herve leger replica

Made Tuesday, 17 of January , 2012 at 5:13 am

After I initially commented I clicked the -Notify me when new feedback are added- checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any way you possibly can take away me from that service? Thanks!

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

What Is BotJunkie?

From the folks who brought you OhGizmo.com, BotJunkie obsessively chronicles Man's inevitable descent into cybernetic slavery.

One robot at a time.