Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

The Ziro robotics kit lets you control your contraptions with a smart glove

Imagine being able to control your own wee robot with a wave of your hand. With ZeroUI’s new robotics kit, Ziro, launching on Indiegogo today, you don’t have to imagine.

The Ziro smart glove comes in a kit that includes an array of modules and other bits and pieces. The kit allows you to build your own robotic creations, from a simple trike to a robot dragon. Your imagination, the parts, and your own ingenuity are the only barriers. The smart glove supports seven different actions for the hand and your robots can be configured using a simple Android or iOS app. You just map the gesture controls to different functions on your robot, and then you can dispense with the smartphone or tablet and control the robot directly with the glove on your hand.

Related Videos

ZeroUI is all about creating natural user interfaces and breaking down the barriers to learning about robotics by making things as simple and intuitive as possible.

Related: Try your hand at robotics. See this solar powered robot kit with 14 different robot modes

“The hand becomes the controller,” ZeroUI’s CEO, Raja Jasti, explained to Digital Trends. “We don’t think about using our hands. It’s natural. What we noticed is that when people are driving a rover, they’re directly controlling these things, whereas a touchscreen gives you the feeling there’s something between you and the thing you’re controlling.”

This is the first application of the company’s gesture-based Natural User Interface (NUI), which it hopes will become a popular platform. It was initially envisioned as a good way to get kids learning about engineering, product design, and physics, and also to tear them away from touchscreens. But ZeroUI is hoping the hobbyist maker movement will also see the appeal.

The modular design is very flexible, so you can use any boxes or materials you have lying around at home to augment your designs. ZeroUI includes some design suggestions in the kits, but hopes to stir up a community that will share projects and progress. You can also design and 3D print your own components and parts and hook them up to the Ziro modules. The possibilities are endless.

Based in San Jose, California, ZeroUI was founded in 2012 when Jasti partnered with Dr. Karthik Ramani, an 18-year veteran of toy engineering. They took their time to test and develop a control system that’s easy to use, but deceptively versatile.

Ziro

“Through user studies, we distilled what people need to seven different actions on the hand,” explained Jasti. “And this covers most of the stuff people want to do.”

The starter kit includes the smart glove, two modules, the smartphone app, and a phone mount for $149. The pro kit adds another two modules, assembly parts for the Rover and Trike designs, and a 360-degree rotating phone mount for a special early-bird Indiegogo price of $199. That price will rise to $249 once the campaign ends.

You get around seven hours of battery life from the modules and about four hours from the sensor-packed glove. The box your kit comes in also doubles as a charging station.

“We see this as a good way to introduce people to robotics,” says Raja. “They may be intimidated, but this makes it accessible.”

We’re excited to try this one out, so look out for a full review soon.

Editors' Recommendations

What is Amazon Music: everything you need to know
Amazon Music

It's a jungle of music streaming platforms out there, so it stands to reason that Amazon would have one among its massive kingdom of services. And while Amazon Music might not be top of mind among the Spotifys and Apple Musics of the world, you might be surprised by its 100-million-song library, high-resolution and spatial audio offerings, podcast library, Alexa voice control, and a pretty amiable user interface that makes finding music pretty easy.

Amazon Music's subscriptions range from free to its premium Music Unlimited tier, which can be added for $9 per month on top of a subscription to Amazon Prime. But they all come with some quirks and features. We're going to break them all down for you to help you choose which, if any, Amazon Music plan is right for you.

Read more
What is Google Assistant? Here’s the guide you need to get started
Using Google Assistant on the Google Pixel Watch.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is huge news right now, thanks to chatbots like ChatGPT -- but did you know you can already access an AI on your Android phone? Google Assistant is Google's AI-powered voice assistant, and it's available on Android, iOS, and a large number of smart devices (like Google's Nest speakers). While not as capable as ChatGPT (yet), Google Assistant can handle an impressive number of tasks — including pausing and resuming songs and videos, making tasks and reminders, and in some cases, even taking and screening phone calls for you.

That may seem like a lot, but Google Assistant is relatively simple to use. If you've never used a voice assistant before, we've got this guide to help you get to grips with it and take your first steps.
What is Google Assistant?

Read more
The Google Pixel Fold may launch a lot sooner than you expected
Alleged dummy model of the Google Pixel Fold.

Google is apparently closer to launching its first foldable phone a lot earlier than leaks had predicted. WinFuture, citing information received from sellers, reports that the Pixel Fold is lined up for a market release in June. It appears that Google will at least give a brief teaser of the phone at its I/O developers conference in May, alongside the budget-centric Pixel 7a.

The report adds that Pixel Fold is the official marketing name of the foldable phone, and it will at least be up for grabs in the European markets in the second week of June. The eagerly awaited phone will be sold in a sole 256GB storage configuration, while color options on the table are Carbon and Porcelain.

Read more