Patent Application
20130324004
This is the first application filed for the present invention.
The present invention generally relates to a toy and, more particularly, to a remote-controlled toy such as a remote-controlled car or spin-droid that may be controlled using a wireless communications device.
Most remote-controlled toys use radiofrequency signals to control movement of the toy, for example, radio-controlled cars, trucks, boats, aircraft, robots, plush animals, etc.
It is also known to use Bluetooth® technology to radio-control a toy car, as disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0054450.
Remote-controlled spinning tops, which are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,063,589 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,427,225, are toy tops that may be controlled by respective players to battle each other in a small stadium.
Recently, applications for wireless communication devices or handheld mobile devices have been developed to enable a user to remotely control a toy, such as a vehicle or aircraft, using radiofrequency signals transmitted from the mobile device.
Due to the popularity of such toys, further improvements and enhancements on these technologies remain highly desirable.
In general, the present invention provides a novel toy that is remotely controlled using a wireless communications device or other mobile device. The toy includes one or more contact sensors disposed in an outer portion of the toy such as, for example, in an elastomeric bumper extending around a perimeter of the toy. When the contact sensor is physically contacted, a contact signal is generated. This signal is transmitted back to the wireless communications device and/or to an opponent's device. Contact data may be used for keeping score. In other embodiments, which will be elaborated below, the contact data may be used to activate toy features. As will also be described below, the application may be used to manage games, view standings, create leagues, manage tournaments, invite players, view replays, share photos, videos and blogs about the games, toys, players, etc. The application may also be used to view and reconfigure performance characteristics of the toy. Many other features may be implemented, as will be described below in greater detail.
The toy may be a wheeled vehicle like a car, truck, boat, aircraft, etc. or it may be a spinning top. In one embodiment, a spin droid includes a spinning top and a detachable upper portion that resembles a robot or droid.
As will be appreciated, this novel toy provides a number of significant enhancements relative to the prior art. These enhancements will be elucidated in the detailed description below.
Accordingly, one aspect of the present invention is a remote-controlled toy comprising a movable toy body comprising a bumper having one or more contact sensors disposed on the bumper, a motor for moving the toy body, and a wireless receiver for receiving a wireless control signal from a wireless controller to control motion of the toy body.
Another aspect of the present invention is a remote-controlled toy controllable by an application executing on a wireless communications device, the toy comprising a wireless receiver for receiving a wireless control signal from the wireless communications device, a motor for moving the toy in response to receiving the wireless control signal, and a contact sensor disposed on an outer portion of the toy, the contact sensor generating a contact signal in response to physical contact on the contact sensor.
Yet another aspect of the present invention is a computer-readable medium comprising instructions in code which, when loaded into a memory and executed by a processor of a wireless communications device, causes the wireless communications device to receive contact signals from contact sensors of a remote-controlled toy that are transmitted wirelessly from the remote-controlled toy to the wireless communications device and display contact data based on the contact signals.
Further features and advantages of the present technology will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in combination with the appended drawings, in which:
It will be noted that, throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.
By way of general overview, the present invention provides a remote-controlled toy that may be controlled wirelessly by a wireless controller such as a wireless communications device executing an application that provides a software-implemented control interface for the toy. The remote-controlled toy includes one or more contact sensors in or on the body of the toy, such as, for example, in the bumper, that generate a contact signal when physically contacted.
Two such toys, a wheeled vehicle 10 and a spin droid 12, are depicted by way of example in
In the embodiments depicted in
To illustrate the inventive concepts,
In one set of embodiments, the toy, such as the illustrated spin droid, may have a transformable body. The transformable body may take may other shapes and forms other than the one illustrated. A spin droid is but one example of the concept. Any foldable or detachable mechanism may be employed to create a transformable body. The toy thus has dual play value, first as a droid with a name, character/personality, fictitious biography, special powers, technical specifications, performance characteristics, etc., and then as a spin top that can be remotely controlled to battle with another spin top or with another type of toy, such as a vehicle.
The toy body may be formed or moulded integrally from plastic (polymers) or composites, although the toy or any components thereof may be made of other materials such metal or wood, for example. The toy body may be monocoque or assembled from components. The toy body may be sold in the form of a kit and assembled by the player prior to use from various blocks, parts, or components. Decals, paints, accessories and the like may be provided to customize the bodywork of the toy.
The radio-controlled vehicle 10 shown in
In the embodiment depicted by way of example in
Although spinning tops and vehicles are presented as the main implementations of this technology, it should be appreciated that the toy may be any other type of remote-controlled toy including, but not limited to, remote-controlled boats, aircraft, robots (droids), action figures, animals, etc. Regardless of the shape of the toy and its means of locomotion, the toy includes at least one contact sensor that registers hits, bumps or any such form of physical contact.
Each one of the two illustrated remote-controlled toys 10, 12 is controlled by its own respective wireless controller 30. This wireless controller may be a dedicated handheld controller with control sticks (joysticks) or a control wheel or knob or it may be a generic wireless communications device running a dedicated application for interacting with the toy. The wireless communications device may be any mobile device, cell phone, smart phone, PDA, tablet, notebook, palmtop, laptop, etc. having a processor operatively coupled to a memory and further including a wireless radiofrequency transmitter for transmitting control signals to a wireless receiver in the toy. Communication may be unidirectional, i.e. one-way (from controller to toy only) or it may be bidirectional. For unidirectional communication, the wireless controller requires only a transmitter and the toy requires only a receiver. For bidirectional communication, each of the wireless controller and the toy includes an RF transceiver. In the latter instance, contact signals may be transmitted back to the wireless controller to enable various functionalities that will be described below.
In one specific embodiment, as illustrated in
As depicted in
As further depicted by way of example in
Due to the asymmetry of the droid-shaped upper portion, it is generally the case that the spin top will only spin properly when the droid-shaped upper portion is detached. However, a symmetrical droid-shaped upper portion may be provided to enable this droid-shaped upper portion to remain on the spin droid during spinning. Alternatively, if the droid-shaped upper portion is sufficiently light, the top, if it has sufficient rotational inertia, may be able to spin properly even if with the upper portion attached.
On larger toys, such as radio-controlled cars, aircraft or boats, the toy may include other equipment or components such as an onboard digital camera. The camera may be used to take photos or videos. Data may be stored in a memory chip on the toy for transfer and playback after the game and/or relayed in real-time wirelessly back to the mobile device or to any other device (e.g. a spectator's device) or broadcast or multicast, e.g. by web-streaming.
The wireless communications device 30 may be any mobile device, personal communications device, smart phone, cell phone, PDA, tablet, notebook, palmtop or any functionally equivalent device. As shown in
As described above, each contact sensor 20 in the toy is adapted to generate a contact signal upon physical contact. In main embodiments, the sensitivity of the contact sensor is factory preset and not adjustable by the user. In other embodiments, however, the sensitivity of the contact sensor may be adjustable so that only substantial physical contact above a certain predetermined force threshold will register as contact. In yet other embodiments, the contact sensor may be a force transducer that senses the actual force applied to the contact sensor. The contact signal may thus indicate the actual force sensed by the contact sensor whereas in other (simpler) implementations the contact sensor merely indicates that there was some physical contact without specifying the force of the collision. Force transducers may be used to award differential points based on the force of the impact. For example, a hard hit may be worth 3 points, a middle hit may be worth 2 points and a soft hit may be worth only 1 point.
In one embodiment, registering a hit or bump on a contact sensor causes the toy to react in some discernible way. For example, if the front bumper of a toy car is hit a certain number of times, this will trigger the opening of the hood. Hitting the rear bumper may cause the trunk of the car to open. In other examples, the car may be intentionally broken apart, disabled, lights may flash or sound effects played. These effects may additionally or alternatively be displayed in a virtual rendition or replay of the crash on the display of the device.
In another embodiment, registering a bump on a contact sensor may cause the mobile device to vibrate in the user's hands to provide real-time tactile feedback to the user.
In one embodiment, the performance/motion/speed/controllability of the toy may be varied as a function of the contacts (bumps it has received). For example, if the toy is bumped at a sensor, the device may be “stunned” or “slowed down” for a short period of time. The device may react to hits or bumps (contact) by improving, degrading or modifying behaviour or performance. The performance modification may be predictable or unpredictable (i.e. a random effect).
The application may be used to display information (“specs”) on the toys in a given class or collection of toys. That way, if a first player's toy is battling a second player's toy, the first and second players can view their opponent's toy's strengths and weaknesses. For example, a collection or class of transformable droid spin tops may offer Droids A, B and C with different character caps, different strengths and weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses (and any character information, history, traits, etc) can be viewed on the mobile application before the battle. The mobile application could also report wins, losses, ties, etc. of the player with whom one is playing. The mobile application may enable players to create and join a league with standings. The mobile application may interact with a web site that hosts the player stats, standings, etc., with a variety of web-enable functionalities such as player-to-player chat, player invitations (challenges) to play, posting photos, videos, blogs of the games that have been played, etc.
In one implementation, the toy may be a programmable toy where strengths and weaknesses can be programmed using the mobile application prior to the battle. For example, a programmable toy may permit the player to allocate a maximum of 10 points, for example, between various characteristics such as speed, robustness, and agility. For example, a player could choose to program a droid by allocating 5 points to speed, 3 points to robustness and 2 points to agility whereas another player might choose to program his droid by allocating only 2 points to speed, but 4 points to robustness and 4 points to agility.
The mobile application may also provide upgrades for the application that links to your car. Upgrades may be purchased, won or provided free of charge. The upgrades may, for example, unlock new features or enhance the performance of the vehicle or these may enable the player to customize his vehicle. Customization may involve mechanically retrofitting the toy with pre-designed aftermarket components (such as special tires, wheels, tail pipes, decals, bodywork, etc. for an RC car). Customization may also involve customizing the responsiveness of the control algorithm, e.g. adjusting steering sensitivity.
Another aspect of the present invention is the application (software) that is loaded on a computing device such as, for example, a mobile phone and which is configured to interact remotely with the toy. The mobile phone application enables the user to remotely control the toy. In addition, the mobile phone application receives contact sensor data transmitted wirelessly from the toy to the mobile device using any suitable wireless connection. A Bluetooth® connection may be utilized, although any other short-range wireless data transmission standard or protocol may be used.
A computer-readable medium comprises instructions in code which, when loaded into a memory and executed by a processor of a wireless communications device, causes the wireless communications device to receive contact signals from contact sensors of a remote-controlled toy that are transmitted wirelessly from the remote-controlled toy to the wireless communications device and display contact data based on the contact signals.
In one embodiment, the code causes the device to compute and display a real-time score based on the contact data wherein different points are awarded based on different locations of the contact sensors.
In one embodiment, the code causes the device to display motion cues on a display of the wireless communications device. User input received via the user interface of the wireless communications device can then be transmitted as control signals from the wireless communications device to the remote-controlled toy, e.g. using a Bluetooth® transceiver. For Bluetooth® implementations, the toy and wireless communications device may be paired using any pairing protocol whether it requires a passkey or not. Bluetooth® implementations may utilize concepts disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0054450 which is hereby incorporated by reference.
In one embodiment, the control signals are modified as a function of the contact data to modify the motion performance of the toy in response to contact signals being received. For example, the device may receive contact signals indicating that the device has been hit. This may cause the device to modulate a default control signal to generate a modified or modulated control signal that instructs the toy to perform in a lessened capacity. For example, instead of transmitting a full speed signal, the device may transmit a middle speed signal. Performance modulation may be implemented by the onboard programmable logic circuit or by the wireless device.
Although battles are generally one-on-one battles between two toys, the battles may also involve more than two toys. Teams of toys may be formed by grouping toys together. The teams may be managed using the application on each player's mobile device. Computing the aggregate points earned by all of the players on one team as compared to another team enables the devices to declare one team a winner.
The software application embodied by the computer-readable medium may be executed on any computing device such as a mobile device, smart phone, cell phone, wireless communications device, personal digital assistant, tablet, notebook, laptop, etc. The device requires a processor, a memory and a radiofrequency transceiver for communicating with the toy. The toy requires a radiofrequency transmitter and either a microprocessor, microcontroller or a control circuit to convert control signals into a drive signals for the toy's motor(s), actuator(s), steering mechanism, braking mechanism, etc.
The steps, acts, procedures, routine, subroutines, or operations of the application may be programmed or coded as computer-readable instructions and recorded electronically, magnetically or optically on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, computer-readable memory, machine-readable memory or computer program product.
A computer-readable medium can be any means that contain, store, communicate, propagate or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus or device. The computer-readable medium may be electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared or any semiconductor system or device. For example, computer executable code to perform the methods disclosed herein may be tangibly recorded on a computer-readable medium including, but not limited to, a floppy-disk, a CD-ROM, a DVD, RAM, ROM, EPROM, Flash Memory or any suitable memory card, etc. The method may also be implemented in hardware. A hardware implementation might employ discrete logic circuits having logic gates for implementing logic functions on data signals, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) having appropriate combinational logic gates, a programmable gate array (PGA), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), etc.
The embodiments of the invention described above are intended to be exemplary only. As will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, to whom this specification is addressed, many obvious variations, modifications, and refinements can be made to the embodiments presented herein without departing from the inventive concept(s) disclosed in this specification. The scope of the exclusive right sought by the applicant is therefore intended to be limited solely by the appended claims.
