You Can Play Rock, Paper, Scissors With This Google IoT Bot | News & Opinion | PCMag.com
How about a robot hand that can play rock, paper, scissors with you? Or what about an artificial flower that can change its color depending on your mood?
At Google I/O, the tech giant has been showing off these concept designs, hoping they’ll inspire developers to build around its new IoT platform, Android Things, which moved out of beta on Monday.
IoT gadgets are certainly nothing new and often end up being smart home appliances. But Android Things is designed to help vendors streamline the whole process of making them. The IoT platform offers a stripped-down version of Android that’s been optimized to work on less powerful computing hardware from Qualcomm, MediaTek and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The capabilities were illustrated by a Google-developed concept design called “Handbot,” a robot arm that can play, rock, paper, scissors. The machine can both form the hand gestures, and also recognize what shapes your own hand is making when playing the game. When you win, Handbot will glow green, if you lose it’ll glow red, whereas yellow means you’ve tied.