WOWCube: Technology that impressed Steve Wozniak
Sneha Paul | Nov 05, 2019 09:55
Innovations and breakthroughs are driven by thinkers. Aside from the potential to create new market directions, great inventors have one very distinguishing feature: the ability to spot really cool ideas made by others. How did a toy become a highly attractive product that interested the IT industry leaders and one of the Apple founders himself?
Why is the WOWCube so incredibly exciting and, more importantly, what exactly is it in the first place?
Following its name, the WOWCube is a cube that consists of eight self-contained modules that have 24 sub displays and rotates, much like a Rubik’s Cube. Magnetic connectors ensure continuous data exchange between the self-contained modules and the streamlined gaming process. Several games have been designed for the WowCube, including puzzles, brainteasers, Scrabble, platformers and mazes. The gaming experience provided by the WOWCube is based on the mixed-reality approach, which combines twisting and shaking the cube in reality with digital actions visualized on the 24 sub displays.
The console combines the properties of physical gadgets, such as dynamic twiddling toys, and digital gaming consoles all in one unit.
One of the inventors, Ilya Osipov, had been a fan of computers since early childhood. Having won the national student programming contest in 1996, he launched his first startup along with his friend three years later and eventually sold it to the Moscow branch of Hearst Corp in 2012. In 2014, after relocating to the U.S., he unexpectedly found that almost all the computer games of his childhood were released by the Brøderbund company, whose HQ was in the same town of Novato, where he coincidentally settled with his family. A pure series of coincidences warmed Osipov up to the fact that he was moving in the right direction.
Three years ago, Osipov went on to study micro-electronics and 3D printing with his son. The WOWCube has been invented while copying the body of someone else's game console on a 3D printer. The main idea was to embed a microprocessor in the Rubik’s Cube and turn the surfaces with screens to play games by turning the sides, where the game’s hero would run from one side to another.
After Osipov built his initial digital concept, he spent three years and more than $1 million to develop a prototype, software, and the first games and applications. Starting with an Arduino and a 3D printer, an excellent team of engineers and other professionals had soon been assembled, who then worked on developing a dozen fully operational devices that were first shown at the Maker's Faire San-Mateo expo.
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Having made their way through the crowd of teenagers who simply occupied the stand, playing with the WOWCube, the team was approached by the Hollywood producer Napoleon Smite III (producer of the sequel to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and the “Captain Kangaroo” TV series). Smite was playing with a cube, asking for the business parameters before saying, “Wow, this is some kind of fantastic toy. I think it will be an absolute hit if you can successfully bring it to the market. Smite knew Steve Wozniak and promised to arrange a meeting with the team.
Soon enough, they found themselves driving 800 miles in one day from San Francisco to Phoenix, Arizona, just so they could be present at the DecTechAZ conference. In sweat pants and T-shirts straight from the car, the team entered the conference to find their friend Smite, who promised a personal conversation with Wozniak in the VIP hall.
The cube has an interesting feature. Since it doesn’t have a single button, the toy turns on and engages the user from the sleep state in two stages: first, when the gyroscopes come to life, and then when the user turns its panels. When the user takes the cube from the table, the cube processor wakes up and turns on peripheral equipment (this takes time), but not the screens. And when the user makes a turn, it instantly shimmers in different colors, almost like magic.
This cool visual effect played a cruel joke on the team: after 16 hours on a bumpy road trip, the cube turned on numerous times and it reached Phoenix with no battery left.
Nevertheless, Wozniak perfectly understood the project idea, and the next day they managed to present this device to him personally. They even got an autograph with a white indelible marker directly on the surface of the cube - “Wo3”. When asked to sign the device, Wozniak said: “My honor, my honor,” and then, “This is the most incredible thing I have seen.”
WOWCube: The
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