Robotic ball rolls via phone control

Gearbox’s smartphone-controlled ball looks quite cool, offers much potential for creative game ideas –

So basically how HTC/Android/Apple make smart phones, we make smart toys. Our first smart toy is a robotic ball that you can move by tilting your phone in the direction you want the ball to roll. We are then leveraging the connectivity and computing power of the phone to create a fully interactive experience for the user. Our first app for the ball is Sumo. I throw my ball on a table, you throws yours on the table and then we can try and sumo each others ball off the table.
[…]
Aside from the games we produce we are also opening up the APIs for the ball so any app developer with no hardware knowledge can build their own games or applications and bring them to the real world.

Very cools – definitely a ball you’ll want to avoid getting stuck in a tree/roof/traffic. More info and more example app ideas on Gearbox’s site. [via TechCrunch]