My business will produce an electronic toy aimed primarily at the gift market. The toy will take the form of a tactile sphere and feature a small LCD display and a number of sensors. Using the data from these sensors it will display complaints about its environment on the display. It is up to the user to make the device happy.

The idea is based on an earlier project for DAT301 (Realtime) and the feedback received after presenting it. I felt that it could be converted into an interesting product and incorporate new game-play elements, such as making it possible for the device to have a happy state, the challenge being to achieve the correct balance of a number of environmental factors.

If the ball is too hot it complains about the heat on the display, if it’s too cold it also complains using its large array of phrases. The main environmental factors it could sense are temperature, light, proximity and orientation.

For my business I want to focus around this single core product and hopefully in the long term branch off from it with a range of products in the same vein.