Digital Dream Labs Launches Crowdfunder to Unlock and Save Anki's Vector STEM Robot
Following the bankruptcy of Vector creator Anki, Digital Dream Labs acquired the assets and is now raising funds to unlock the bot for all.
Digital Dream Labs has launched a crowdfunding campaign seeking the funds necessary to unlock the popular but proprietary Anki Vector educational robot — creating, it hopes, a self-sustaining enthusiast development community surrounding the device.
Anki's Vector, a friendly robot looking straight out of the WALL-E universe, proved popular on launch — but not popular enough, unfortunately, to prevent the company from declaring bankruptcy. For Vector owners, the news wasn't good: The proprietary Vector relies upon connections to Anki's servers, and once the servers are shut down so is the robot.
Enter Digital Dream Labs, which acquired Anki's assets following the bankruptcy. "Everyone's favourite robot is about to be reborn. Only this time he will be built to last with endless possibilities," the company claims. "We are Digital Dream Labs and have a mission to continue the journey of Vector. There are limitless use cases for this fascinating robot and we chose these two projects to kick off the year with his relaunch because we want all of you to be rest assured that no matter what happens, he will live on!
"Through this project, we will build a bootloader image that permanently converts a production robot into a 'Dev' robot. We will enable the user to flashboot system partitions. We will control ownership and authenticity through cryptographic security. We will sign all builds. We will provide an additional set of keys to the community for the purpose of making open Vector builds. This is identical to the method that the previous company used for internal development. With the robot unlocked, we will then establish a step-wise fashion of releasing additional keys for various portions of Vector to the community to continually enhance and expand features."
That, however, forms only part of Digital Dream Labs' vision. Should the company raise more than $500,000 from its crowdfunding campaign, it aims to create a self-sustaining development community in which profits from the sale of "Escape Pod" licences will be shared with outside contributors. Should the company raise more than $1 million, meanwhile, it pledges to begin offering the same functionality for other autonomous vehicles.
More information is available on the company's Kickstarter campaign page, where it has already broken past its initial funding goal.