21st Century Skills InnovatIon LIbrary Sphero M a k e rS as Innovators Cherry Lake PubLishing ann arbor MiChigan by adrienne Matteson
MakerS as innovaTors Chapter 1 Have a Ball W ould you like to meet one of the most incredible robots available today On its own it doesn’t look like much more than a plastic ball But when you connect it to a smartphone or tablet it comes alive with light and movement This little ball is capable of sensing and responding to its own acceleration and direction It can react to collisions and falling It even knows the temperature Sphero is easy to program and control using a tablet computer 44
It is complex enough to challenge master programmers and simple enough to be a tool for elementary school students Meet Sphero the little ball that does it all Sphero is an app-controlled robotic ball It uses wireless Bluetooth signals to connect to apps on tab lets and smartphones and becomes a working part of the app There are dozens of Sphero apps Within them Sphero takes on many different roles Sphero can be driven around like a remote-controlled car used as the joystick for a game you are playing fol low a path you draw on your tablet or react to being grabbed as part of a multiplayer game At its most sophisticated Sphero can run a complex program you have coded yourself Sphero’s abilities will grow along with your programming skills and your imagination How It All Began Sphero was invented in 2010 and launched in 2011 by engineers Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein The two men wanted to use their smartphones to control objects in the real world At first they used their phones like remote controls to turn on lights 5 Sphero
