Virtual reality is turning into, well, reality – Anki has recently unveiled its very first product, and it is bringing robotics into the realm of the real world.
Boris Sofman, co-founder and CEO of Anki, was the only third-party developer to present at Apple’s WWDC keynote last month. He used his stage time to demonstrate Anki Drive, a “real-world video game” in which small physical cars speed and race around a rug-like mat. The cars make decisions in real time via a Bluetooth-supported iPhone app, adapt to the other cars’ decisions, and even unleash virtual “attacks” on their competitor cars.
“What we really have is a video game inside an iOS device that matches the physical world," Sofman said. "What you saw onstage was one iPhone. It was simultaneously coordinating all four of those cars. The iPhone becomes not just the controller but the brains behind the entire experience.”
The program is the result of five years of development by Anki founders Sofman, Mark Patalucci and Hans Tappeiner. The three met at a robotics PhD program at Carnegie Mellon and formed Anki with the intention of developing robotic technology for the consumer sector. This focus on entertainment, combined with the founders’ extensive knowledge of robotics, has created a highly unique product in Anki Drive. It is a video game that exists beyond a screen, and must therefore balance advanced technology with affordability in order to appeal to its intended audience.
One such obstacle to finding this balance is, as Sofman put it, “dealing with the uncertainties that come with [the physical world].” Anki Drive cannot manipulate reality as on-screen video games might; rather, its components are forced to adapt to real-world challenges. For instance, Sofman gave the example of the potential for dust buildup on the cars’ tires as they circle the track. While on-screen video games might be able to ignore this problem without sacrificing game quality or excitement, Anki does not have that privilege. But the founders’ experience in robotic technology enabled them to create control algorithms that run 500 times per minute, allowing the cars to rapidly adapt to the obstacles of the physical world.
These meticulous details of Anki Drive have made for a five-year-long and rather under-the-radar production process, but the program is set to release this fall exclusively through Apple. And according to Sofman, it won’t be just another toy: “For us, the long-term vision is about robotics…coming into consumers’ lives and actually reinventing almost every aspect of how we live, when you think of the sort of impact it can have.”
