Fellow robot fanatics Rejoice!!A brand new source for the objects of our desires has appeared on the web. My Robot Nation’s website has recently opened for business allowing any citizen of the web to design their own Robot and then at the click of a button have it 3D printed.
Designing your Robot couldn’t be simpler, with the latest 3D WebGL interface the site feels more like a character builder in the latest computer game, this is point and click design at its simplest and best. The full 3D view lets you customize every millimeter of your new Robot. Once your satisfied with your creation hit the make my robot button and relax until your custom robot is delivered to your door. When unwrapping your robot you are required to pronounce, like an over-eager Dr Frankenstein, “It has Arrived”.
Built a top the latest web technology – WebGL and HTML5 – which limits to access Chrome and Firefox users at the moment. For Chrome users the My Robot Nation app can be downloaded from the Chrome Store, giving a slightly smoother and faster feel to the application.
Every aspect of your Robot is customized during the design process. With multiple options for every characteristic – body parts, pose, colours, logo’s and weapons – 4 billion combinations are possible, this along with custom positioning of stickers and logos should ensure every robot ever created is unique. Once you have completed your Robot the 3D Printing is done by Canadian company Offload Studio’s and delivered to your door in a couple of days, depending on how far away from Canada you are. The finished robots are fixed into the selected pose or position, no moving parts in this generation.
Off-load use Z Corporation 3D printers. Layer by layer the printer deposits a binder with 24bit color elements into a loose gypsum powder. The powder, very similar to dry plaster of Paris gives the finished robots a ceramic feel. Each freshly printed robot is gently removed from the loose powder and sealed to complete the surface and strengthen the robot. The entire process is completed in hours and your new robot delivered a day or two later.
Kodama Studio’s are the driving force behind My Robot Nation. Mark Danks and Sarah Stocker co-founded the Silicon Valley start-up with the idea of making 3D printing and custom products a part of everyday life. Seeing the potential boom they got busy with the robots. Both Stocker and Danks have a wealth of experience in video game industry – Sony Inc, UbiSoft, Electronic Arts -, it shows in the slick design and presentation of My Robot Nation.
“We chose robots because they’re easy to understand, and they’re cool and cheap,” said Stocker. “But expectations are that everything they own can be personalized.”
Using the terms Robot and Revolution in the same sentence is often a very bad sign, warning bells go off. In this case My Robot Nation is a tiny little retail robot revolution. Part of a new kind of retail, not just retail online but online customization combined with cheap on-demand production, the complete opposite to the traditional mass production model. Robots are just the beginning in Kodama Studio’s attempts to establish a new retail model, robots are after all a catchy starting point. The ability to easily work in 3D designing your own customized product and have it automatically manufactured to your specifications is their ultimate goal and you can bet they will devise a fiendish way to make it fun.
Kodama Studio’s have managed to develop a simple and intuitive system for creating Robots that’s almost as much fun as unwrapping your new creation. My Robot Revolution can produce robots in 5 sizes ranging from 2 to 6 inches tall. Prices are: 2″ $17.99 USD, 3″ $24.99 USD, 4″ $52.99 USD, 5″ $99.99 USD and the 6″ is $169.99 USD. It could be time to break out the stop frame animation camera, rise of the little robot nation.
Source: My Robot Nation
