TOSY

TOSY (TOSY Robotics) is a company from Vietnam that specializes in designing and manufacturing robots and smart toys. Founded in 2004, TOSY’s products are now available in more than 60 countries worldwide and have been registered for patent, copyright and trademark in all these countries. Its current commercial products are DiscoRobo, TOOP and AFO.

Brand

Technology – Originality – Satisfaction – Yearning

History

• 2004 / Sep: TOSY was founded.
• 2005 / Jan: Started developing TOPIO – a humanoid robot – that can play ping pong.
• 2006 / Apr: Opened its first factory in An Khanh Industrial Zone.
• 2007 / Nov: Made its first international appearance in IREX (International Robot Exhibition) – world's largest robot trade fair – held in Tokyo, Japan and introduced TOPIO 1.0.^[1]
• 2009:

Feb: TOPIO 2.0 made an impression at Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade Fair – world’s largest toy trade fair – held at Nuremberg, Germany; also introduced other smart toys like: BallRobo, TyreRobo & AFO.
Sep: Opened its second factory at Cau Giay Industrial Zone.
Nov: Made its second appearance at IREX Robot Trade Fair.

• 2010:

Feb: Made its second appearance at Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade Fair.
Jun: Attended Automatica – world’s largest automation trade fair – held in Munich, Germany to introduce 3 industrial robots: Parallel Robot, Scara Robot & Arm Robot.

• 2011:

Jan: Made its first appearance at Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair – Asia's largest toy trade fair.
Feb: Made its third appearance at Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade Fair.
Made its first appearance at New York Toy Fair – world’s third largest toy trade fair – held in New York, US to introduce TOOP.
Jul: TOOP was awarded by Guinness World Records as “The world’s longest-running mechanical spinning top”.

• 2012:

Jan: Introduced mRobo 1.0 at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) – world’s largest electronics & technology trade fair – held in Las Vegas, US. Worldwide music pop star Justin Bieber was invited by TOSY to come and promote for the robot.^[2][3]
Feb: Made its fourth appearance at Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade Fair.
Made its second appearance at New York Toy Fair.
Oct: Made its second appearance at Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair.
Made its first appearance at CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies).^[4]

• 2013:

Jan: Dancer/choreographer Derek Hough, three-times winner of Dancing with the Stars, attended this CES Trade Fair to promote for the mRobo 2.0.^[5]
Jul: Made its first appearance at IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) – one of Europe’s most popular industrial exhibitions – held in Berlin, Germany.^[6]
Oct: Made its third appearance at New York Toy Fair to introduce DiscoRobo.^[7]

• 2014:

Jun: Moved to the new office headquarter at Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi.
Oct: Made its third appearance at Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair.
Dec: Launched the new version DiscoRobo 2.0.

• 2015:

Feb: Made its fifth appearance at Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade Fair.
Made its fourth appearance at New York Toy Fair.

Robots

• mRobo

mRobo is the combination of a dancing humanoid robot and a high-quality speaker.^[8] From its initial cube-shaped of a speaker, once the music starts, the robot grows out a head, legs, arms and begins transforming into a fully-fledged 18-inch tall robot. It then starts grooving body parts to the music as it plays through its rumbling stomach. With 42 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs), mRobo could perform a variety of entertaining dance moves.^[9]

mRobo comes with 2GB of memory that allows internal storage of about 500 songs. The audio power amplifier and speaker are quality units that provide solid bass down to 40 Hz. The robot weighs 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg), measures 4.3 (D) x 6.3 (W) x 7.9 (H) inches (10 x 16 x 20 cm), and runs off batteries. Hence, its advanced engineering gives the robot an ability to slide, move forward/downward or turn right/left at ease.^[10]

The robot will not only play music but it'll dance along to it, making it one of the more entertaining ways to listen to music. mRobo is not limited to its dance moves either, as users can upload their own music from either a Mac or PC or even stream music into the robot via Bluetooth.^[11] TOSY said the battery-operated mRobo "uses software to analyze music for beats and rhythms to which it responds with corresponding moves". This means that if you don't exactly know much about dancing, you can still keep your robot up to date with the latest songs and dances to go along with them.^[12]

• 
  Derek Hough choreographed mRobo’s dance performance at CES 2013 [Video] ^[13][14]

• TOPIO

It has been known that ping pong is interesting to roboticists because it requires understanding of dynamic environments, accurate real-time vision, fast actuation and intelligence to play the game with a winning strategy. TOPIO is a humanoid robot that can play one-on-one ping pong with humans. It was first introduced in IREX – world's largest robot trade fair – held in Tokyo, Japan in November 28, 2007.^[15] While TOPIO 1.0 runs on water power, measures 1,8m, weighs 500 kg, has 6 legs and cannot move, TOPIO 2.0 is 2,1m but only weighs 60 kg, has 2 legs and can move. As it is considered a much more advanced version compared to the former one, TOPIO 2.0 has 28 DoFs and runs on electricity. Its ability to move, dance and play ping pong is based on modules such as high-speed image sensor, artificial neural network, movement controller, etc. The newest TOPIO 3.0 is as tall as 1,88m and weighs 120 kg with 32 DoFs.

The biggest challenge in designing TOPIO 3.0 is to fulfill 2 requirements: to be able to move & to play ping pong. In robotics engineering, it is not an easy task to combine these two factors. Nevertheless, TOPIO has undergone a thorough research and development procedure so that it could move fluently in 2 foot.^[16]

Ho Vinh Hoang, the CEO and Chief Designer of the TOPIO project, stated that "the robot is getting special attention from experts and exhibition visitors, particularly major international technology companies and the mass media".^[17]

• 
  TOPIO 1.0
• 
  TOPIO 2.0

• SketRobo

SketRobo is a humanoid robot that can draw over 200 pre-loaded images, using a hand-held pen and a sheet of paper clipped to a table in front of it. At the moment, SketRobo’s drawing ability is still limited; however, in the future, TOSY will equip the robot with facial recognition system and motion detection so as the robot can sketch the faces of real people.^[18] TOSY also aims to use SketRobo to help children learn how to draw.

• TOPIO Dio

TOPIO Dio is a humanoid robot that measures 125 cm tall and tips the scale at 45 kg, where it features 28 DoFs, a trio of wheels, a built-in camera, a sensor that helps it avoid obstacles and a Wi-Fi control capability.^[19] TOSY says that the robot is mainly aimed at the “hospitality and restaurant” industries.^[20]

• 
  SketRobo

Smart toys

• DiscoRobo

DiscoRobo represents a new generation of entertaining and interactive high-tech toys. Using the latest beat detection technology, DiscoRobo can feel a variety of sounds like: drums, beatbox, handclaps, etc. and dance along with 56 moves while expressing 8 fun facial expressions. With the free DiscoRobo Chat app (available on iOS, Android and Windows operating systems), users can "chat" with DiscoRobo or choreograph its dancing steps. In dance mode, just a shake of the phone or a swipe across the virtual DiscoRobo on screen makes the actual robot react and mimic the movements. In addition, users can interact with DiscoRobo using the TV remote: just press any button from 0-9 and the robot will sing, dance or tell a joke. If users pair two DiscoRobo robots together – facing each other – the robots will also chat with each other with built-in conversations.^[21]

The DiscoRobo band is available in four vibrant colors: Blue (Lucas), Red (Andy), Pink (Ruby) and Purple (Alex). The DiscoRobo Special Set also includes one DiscoStage, which is a high-quality portable Mp3 player speaker with a 128Mb internal memory for music storage and music device connectivity. Users can download music to the memory card in the speaker or connect the speaker to their smartphones and tablets to play the music for the robot to dance.

The production chain of DiscoRobo is committed to use high quality plastic materials passing the strict safety and quality rules in many markets so that the toy should be perfectly safe products for kids.^[22]

• TOOP

Similar to the traditional top game of Vietnamese children, TOOP is a modern spinning top that runs on 3A battery with non-stop motorized spinning. With a controlling stick, players can create their own game strategy and control the tops to compete with others on the arena battle set. In 2011 July 7, TOOP was awarded by Guinness World Records as “The world’s longest-running mechanical spinning top”. With its record of spinning for 24 hours 35 minutes and 15 seconds, TOOP was honored to become the first and only toy from Vietnam that claims this prestigious award.^[23]

• 
  Certification from Guinness World Records

• AFO

AFO is a cutting-edge boomerang with a unique set of features that set it apart from conventional boomerangs. AFO was designed in such a way that it can fly far distance and return to you exactly. The AFO's flexible and thin blades are instrumental to helping it stay aloft for long periods of time. Once AFO flies to the sky, its LED light will immediately turn on, creating a wonderful light show especially in the night time.^[24] Players are encouraged to use their creativity to come up with different ways of playing AFO both indoor and outdoor.^[25]

AFO can be played both indoor and outdoor with ease [Video] ^[26]

Industrial robots

In 2010 Automatica Exhibition held in Munich, TOSY introduced 3 industrial robots: Arm Robot, Parallel Robot & Scara Robot. These robots have impressed exhibition visitors for their quality as well as for their extreme low cost of ¼ comparing to industrial robots from other countries. Arm Robot is an interactive automatic device that can solder, paint, assemble, move boxes or pallets, etc. Scara Robot and Parallel Robot are able to execute accurate production on fast-moving conveyors. These 3 robots have accuracy measurement of 0,1mm, work range of 0,6-2m and work load of 1–30 kg. To minimize production cost, TOSY has self-created the entire components of its industrial robots like engine, reducer, electrical network, automatic control,… ^[27]

• 
  Arm robot
• 
  Parallel robot
• 
  Scara robot

Other products

BallRobo and TyreRobo are robots that can freely move in all directions and are controlled by a remote control. These 2 robots have been registered for patent for its special mechanical engineering that helps them move on different topographics: sand, snow, water, etc.

• 
  BallRobo
• 
  TyreRobo

International Awards

• Best Toy Award – AFO, Good Housekeeping, 2011 ^[28]
• Top Tech Toy – AFO, The Street, 2011 ^[29]
• Guinness World Records – TOOP, 2011 ^[23]
• Great Toy of the Year – TOOP, Good Housekeeping, 2012 ^[30]
• Best of Toy Fair – DiscoRobo, Popular Science, 2012 ^[31]
• Space Age Award for Best High-tech Toy – SketRobo, 2012 ^[32]
• Top Product at New York Toy Fair – SketRobo, Mashable, 2012 ^[33]
• Best of CES – mRobo, The Washington Post, 2012 ^[34]
• Best of CES – mRobo, The Huffington Post, 2012 ^[35]

References