Tipron is your personal home robot to drive about and projects media to the wall. This “Roomba-esque” companion is designed and built by the Japanese company Cerevo, hailing from Tokyo.
If you’re looking for a robotic buddy to support you watching video, wherever you are via wall projection, this one might be for you.
Tipron has a charging homebase and needs an app to run all functions. When receiving a trigger, it leaves the charging station and drives to a suitable wall, extends the projection “head”, boots up the projection light bulb and automatically adjusts the projection, but you can also manually to do this help via app. Tipron has a built-in mono speaker, so you don’t need to worry about the audio.
Via app you can also set destinations and routes to let the little robot better find his way to your favorite spots. If you’re planning a movie night with friends, you can also schedule Tipron in advance.
Making use of your local Wifi network, Tipron will connect to the Internet to load YouTube videos or give you the latest news via RSS. For all offline content, there is also an HDMI and an USB port available on Tipron.
The projector emits video with a brightness of 250 lumens, can establish a display size of max. 80 inch and show a video resolution of max. 720p. The battery has a capacity of 5,900 mAh and it takes the charging station about two hours to give Tipron a full kick of energy.
The system is about 9.5 kg heavy and reaches a dimension of 300 mm x 33 0mm 810mm , in projection mode. All these video and audio specs are not suitable for the home-cinema enthusiasts out there and far away from professional use.
Solutions like the Tipron are interesting, but without a more solid use case, it might be difficult to sell the Robo IoT Home-Cinema-Assistant to consumers at a price of $2,299. I think it’s a cool product but I am not sure if there is a market for a mobile video projector.
If you’re not in need of mobility, a generic video projector hooked up with a Chromecast video streaming device will do for a fraction of the costs. And if there is a market, it’s likely to be attacked by companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon. I am keen to see more developments around this space in the future. It could also be that a robot with a display, and not a projector, might be a better solution to many.
Cerevo has been founded in 2007 in Tokyo and in 2011 they branched out to have an office in Redmond, US, as well. They are led by President and CEO Takuma Iwasa and they have been working on robotics and IoT solutions ever since. Their portfolio suggests a focus on the consumer market, but they claim to also offer solutions to professional uses on their website.
YouTube: Tipron – A transforming, Internet connected projection home robot
Photo credit: Cerevo