Back in February, I reviewed Sphero, the awesome iPhone-controlled ball from Orbotix, which I had a blast playing with.
When Sphero launched in late 2011, it came with few apps. Since that time, Orbotix has been hard at work creating new ways for people to use Sphero, including augmented reality apps. The company released its first AR title, Sharky the Beaver, which uses Sphero to control and play with a virtual beaver.
Orbotix is working on other augmented reality apps such as The Rolling Dead, a zombie-AR game, and today, Orbotix released a new Sphero Augmented Reality plug-in for Unity. The plug-in is designed to allow app developers to use their own 3-D models to create games, using Sphero as a control option.
The plug-in provides vision detection by automatically coordinating the camera and ball position, distance, orientation and more. The plug-in forms a bridge between Unity and Sphero’s native Android and iOS SDKs.