The idea is really good. Robotic construction with the use of a cellphone (read: iPhone or Android) as the processing Unit. This is quite a step ahead from the standard available robotics kits, which either come as pre-assembled or one-purpose kit with which you can only make one (or a small set of) robotic inventions, or they come closer to the LEGO mindstorms kit or Fishertechnik that come with their own  controller.

Romotive‘s Idea is to allow people to program and control their robotic kits, The ROMO, with their smartphone, using a combination of apps (a true “app store” for robots) and the Phones SDK, libraries are still in development. This flexibility will also come on the hardware side, where you can by modules for your bots, servo motors, different types of sensors, etc.

As a new start-up at Kickstarter.com Romotive is doing quite well and is almost near the 32.000$ of their financial target to make it a reality. Their starter model is a quite simple base with a phone stand and connector and looks like it will give quite some hours of entertainment. The basic set, as a Kickstarter Project backer will cost you 78$ and you’ll get the first base model. the interesting part is that if you pay a bit more (141$), they send you 2 models, with which you can “play” together in a mario-style augmented reality game.

Kickstarter project Page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smartphone-robot

Technorati Tags: Mindstorms, Mobile, Robot and Robotics