Sketch-A-Move

February 9, 2005 9:17 AM

Sketch-A-Move Draw a straight line on top of the car, lift the pen and the car shoots off in a straight line. Draw a circle on the car and the car starts wildly spinning around. Draw a complicated squiggle and the car spirals in and out. Quicktime Video Link#1 and Link#2
posted by Hands of Manos (35 comments total)

That should really be ... Quicktime Video Link#1 and Link#2
posted by seanyboy at 9:25 AM on February 9, 2005

"The car in the video is fake!"

Do they just mean that's not what the car will look like or that's just a remote controlled car that they've done up to show a concept?
posted by unsupervised at 9:28 AM on February 9, 2005

Oh, either way, that's ten kinds of awesome.
posted by unsupervised at 9:29 AM on February 9, 2005

But - yes. Ten times of awesome pretty much covers it.
posted by seanyboy at 9:30 AM on February 9, 2005

Yep, very, very cool idea and concept. Now, can they get a wireless card in there so I can control it from my Clie's touchscreen?

What about weapons systems? And how soon until the military co-opts it?
posted by fenriq at 9:39 AM on February 9, 2005

C'est Incroyable! Hyper-Cool.
posted by Freen at 9:41 AM on February 9, 2005

Or rather, it would be hyper-cool if they made a working prototype. I could flip off a water balloon and then stomp on it with my foot, but that wouldn't mean that The Bird made it pop.
posted by Plutor at 9:44 AM on February 9, 2005

the main links now go to the proper URLs, thanks for the catch seanyboy.
posted by jessamyn at 9:48 AM on February 9, 2005

Do they just mean that's not what the car will look like or that's just a remote controlled car that they've done up to show a concept?

I'm guessing remote controlled, but touch sensitive surfaces are such an established technology I don't see any reason this couldn't be implemented in real life.
posted by bobo123 at 9:49 AM on February 9, 2005

Thank you seanboy.

My favorite part of the clips are the simulated sound effects made by the people.

"whaaaaaooooom wha whaaaaaaaoooooom"
posted by Hands of Manos at 9:52 AM on February 9, 2005

Look for the magnets under the table. But cool idea regardless. Great way to procrastinate at your desk... around the keyboard, under the mouse wire....
posted by whisperquiet at 9:54 AM on February 9, 2005

It could easily be made, but it's likely to be very expensive.
First, you'll need a radio controlled car with a drywipe top. That's pretty easy to do.
Secondly, the pen needs to be radio transmitting, actually work as a pen, but it should also have some kind of ipen type sensor in order for it to record and transmit what path the pen takes. There are pens out there which write in ink and electronically at the same time, but I was unable to find one on google.

Finally, you may need a small electronic box that takes the path described by the pen and transmits it as wheel turns, etc to the car. Hopefully, you could fit this into the pen or the car, but it could as easily be hidden in a "garage"

Add some minor bits so that the cars know which pen is writing on it, write the software, and you're away.

Perfectly possible with todays technology.
I think people might get too hung up on the top of the car being the device which detects the pattern being written on it. Move that part of the puzzle to the pen, and I think it's possible.

(Although how the pen would know where the top of the car is might be tricky.)
posted by seanyboy at 10:24 AM on February 9, 2005

Actually, the iPen is exactly the technology for this.
By "top of the car", I meant the front of the car. Any straight line (Front to Back) (Back Left to Front Right) would look the same to the iPen.
posted by seanyboy at 10:32 AM on February 9, 2005

That should really be ... Quicktime Video Link#1 and Link#2

I think what you really meant to say was, Quicktime Video Link#1 and Link#2.

DOWN WITH EMBEDDED VIDEO
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:38 AM on February 9, 2005

OK - I *know* that I've seen this before, but I can't find it here on mefi... most perplexing, as I don't really hang around anywhere else that this might have been linked... :-(
posted by Chunder at 11:08 AM on February 9, 2005

seanboy,

You mean the type of pen Bill Cosby used to use on picture pages?


posted by Hands of Manos at 11:08 AM on February 9, 2005

Why, seanyboy, couldn't the top of the car include a laptop trackpad? (Would it be a size or processor issue?)
posted by nobody at 11:36 AM on February 9, 2005

Look for the magnets under the table.

Yep, magnets. Totally magnets. I am not impressed.
(sips tea).
posted by malaprohibita at 11:38 AM on February 9, 2005

So, wait - this doesn't work, then?

I was trying to figure out just how this was happening - you all seem to be saying that these are /not/, in fact, working prototypes?
posted by Yellowbeard at 12:24 PM on February 9, 2005

Yep, magnets. Totally magnets. I am not impressed.

I think they're Micro RC cars, like they move too fast for magnets and you can see small antennae on the cars.

I assume they want to implement a trackpad top, I'm guessing that would not be prohibitively expensive if the Nintendo DS can include it. I like the concept even though they haven't a working prototype.
posted by bobo123 at 12:31 PM on February 9, 2005

you all seem to be saying that these are /not/, in fact, working prototypes?

That is indeed what everyone is saying. It's cool that the technology is possible, but come on. It's nothing as just an idea.

Consider me disappointed.
posted by rafter at 12:32 PM on February 9, 2005

To clarify, I think it is an excellent idea. But the idea comes across pretty well just in the text of the FPP. It seems a little pointless to go through all the trouble of making a video using the RC cars.
posted by rafter at 12:33 PM on February 9, 2005

yes, it's a very impressive idea. Perhaps the ladies in the video were making a proof of concept for Mattel (?) to show that, if these cars were real, they'd be fun. But the idea that you can draw on two cars, and have the first one wait patiently while you draw on the second and then they both take off at the same time is absurd. Furthermore, the distance from the start point that the cars are capable of traveling changes from experiment to experiment, as does the ratio of front-back distance to left-right distance.

It's extraordinarily cool, and I hope, if these ladies are genuine, that this was a page to show a toy idea and not a hoax intended to imply that these things work right now.
posted by shmegegge at 12:50 PM on February 9, 2005

If it's real, the simultaneous launch problem is probably being done via offscreen "go" command -- that is, these are driven by a host computer. If the path is indeed being stored in the pen, then maybe the act of cradling the pen uploads the path data and then you fire the command from the computer. But I like the wireless touchpad idea better. Either way the smarts are in the host PC.

As far changing distance ratios, that might be settable in the host computer program.

Totally doable.
posted by intermod at 1:44 PM on February 9, 2005

I'm suspicious. It seems like the cars go through maneuvers that would require more accurate and to scale sketches than those in the video. I'm betting on magnets or radio control. And sorry even if it does work, it doesn't look fun. Now maybe if it could shoot something or look up skirts with a little camera, then y'all'd have something.
posted by Toecutter at 2:07 PM on February 9, 2005

Because of our aim to create a flexible toy we chose to focus on possible play scenarios rather than develop a working prototype. The car in the video is fake!

So as it says on the page, it is a concept, not a real thing. Postulate on how it could work all you want, but they didn't.
posted by Badgermann at 2:26 PM on February 9, 2005

Is this significantly different that those toy cars that follow a line drawn on the actual driving surface? Is it just the fact the car is "interpreting" what is written on its roof? And the fact that you don't have to draw over everything?
posted by bachelor#3 at 2:53 PM on February 9, 2005

Grrr ... pet peeve ... people who say "here's how it works" when they mean "here's how you use it". But, they did say up-front:

"To explore the idea we decided it would be most effective to focus on the play possibilities for the car rather than trying to build a working prototype. The car in our videoscenarios is not technically working" (emphasis mine)

I like this way of saying "It was way too hard to even try to come up with a working prototype, so we decided to have some fun faking it"
posted by kcds at 3:08 PM on February 9, 2005

If they are remote control- that's sad. Otherwise it's the coolest thing I ever did saw.

I liked the domino bracelet
posted by bdave at 3:09 PM on February 9, 2005

What's so sad about it? The two 'inventors' aren't an electronics company, they just came up with an idea for a product. I think it looks hella fun for kids, who contrary to what Toecutter wants, don't need their playthings to look up girls' skirts.
posted by anthill at 3:18 PM on February 9, 2005

Er . . . just kidding about the skirt thing . . . sheesh.

But in truth, I don't think it looks fun -- just being honest. Here's why: it's basically just another program-able car toy -- there are a lot on the market. The basic idea with them is that you program in a driving routine, press the button and off it goes. Fun like the first two or three times.
I was only a little snarky because the couple of times my kids have gotten something like that, be it car or robot, etc., they are usually disappointed it's not straight up radio controlled.

My bad for confusing simulated fun for working prototype in the video scenario :).
posted by Toecutter at 5:38 PM on February 9, 2005

I thought it is refreshingly cool.

Girls who have loads of fun playing with cars and felt-pens, how can that not be cool? Even if they are not really working, the videos did convey the fun factor of it. And IMHO they are way more fun than LEGO mindstorms robots, just because the kind of 'programming' is so low key. It's a bit like the Segway, it just works.
posted by kika at 6:04 PM on February 9, 2005

Chunder- B3ta, about two months ago.
posted by oflinkey at 9:22 PM on February 9, 2005

Yup, I saw it on B3ta. And I don't think it's a pitch for a new toy idea. I think it's nothing more than a cool art project.
posted by salmacis at 5:38 AM on February 10, 2005

oflinkey/salmacis - that's the one! Thanks! ;-)

I still *so* want it to be real, though! :-)
posted by Chunder at 10:07 AM on February 11, 2005