 This is one of those products where it's hard to say if this qualifies for more of the tech channel or the cat channel. This is the Sphero from Orbotics. And basically what it is, is if you check out the green one that's out there in the track that they've set up, that's the one that I'm controlling with this iPod touch. And I'm just going to bring it around back to us. This is John from Sphero and I'd like him to explain just a little bit what the heck is going on with this thing. How do I set this up and get this working? So Sphero is a smartphone controlled robotic ball, it works on Android and iOS. And how you work it is you shake it to wake it up and it's going to blink three colors, you connect to it over Bluetooth and then you can drive it around. We have over 20 different apps and games that you can use to either control Sphero or you can actually use Sphero as a controller and tilt it in your hand to turn it around. In addition we have some new augmented reality games that have just come out like Sharky the Beaver and The Rolling Dead which we just announced. Do you want to drive in the race? No, I'm okay. Let's sort of focus on how you actually manage to race multiples of these things at a time. How the heck do you know which one you're connecting to? So when you connect to it you can actually bring up the Bluetooth screen here and there we go. So you can see there's a bunch of different Spheroes like blue, yellow, blue, green, red, red, purple, orange, red, white, purple, white. So when you wake up your Sphero it's going to flash the three color code and you know which one to connect to. So if you and your brother both get a Sphero on Christmas morning you'll know which one you need to connect to. Now how durable is this thing? Is it appropriate as a cat toy? I mean can I throw it up for my dog even? Oh yes, my dog chews on it all the time. In fact I can actually take it, stand on it on the floor and I'm putting all my weight on that one foot and I'm not crushing it. And you can actually just throw it out there and if you go back to the home screen there and relaunch the app you'll be able to drive it around just fine up there. Wow very cool stuff. Okay so how much does one of these cost? Retails for $129 it's available at the Apple Store, Brookstone and Target. Now do I have to control it with the joy pad or do I have other options? So if you press this button down here you can actually switch it into tilt mode. So now you hold it flat it's going to stay still but as you tilt it it's going to drive in whichever direction you tilt it. So unlike an RC car there isn't an obvious front of the Sphero so how does it know that when I tilt it this way it needs to move away from me? So when you first start playing with it you actually have to aim it. So you press this button right here. I think ours is behind the pillar. Alright so we got all our Spheroes on the line. A little blue light comes on when we point that blue light towards us and then Sphero knows where we're standing in relation to it. You need to put this little blue light this way because we are going clockwise. Alright thanks guys. So this was the Sphero from Orbotics. Don't miss any of our CES 2013 coverage and as always don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips. We actually didn't make it away from the Orbotics booth just yet. They have an augmented reality game with their little ball device here that doesn't look like a ball anymore at all. In fact it looks, well if you look down at the ground it looks like a ball. But if you look at the screen that's taking a feed from the iPad being held by Fabrizio here it is a beaver that is running around on the ground. So you guys are replacing with the camera on the iPad the ball with this beaver model. Yep, that's correct. So we're tracking the ball in every frame and using it to figure out where the ball is, where the camera is and that allows us to draw any kind of 3D content we want. In this app we just draw over the ball but we have other apps where we draw other objects in. Zombies come up out of the ground, coins to collect, all sorts of things. Now you showed us here, do you want to just turn yourself so that, oh yeah I guess here just bring the, yeah there you go, there you go. So now you can see what he looks like. He actually gets bigger as the ball gets closer. Can you take him a little bit further away from us so that we can see how he, yeah there we go. So we can see how he gets smaller as he gets further away. So you have a game where you can chuck cupcakes to him and you can fling them quite a distance in order to try to feed Mr. Sharky over there, is that correct? Yeah that's correct. Alright so guys, very very cool demo, it goes beyond just sort of racing it around on a track. I mean this is more of a tech demo at this point but you guys have plans to continue to develop this in the future. Definitely over the next year we're going to build this out. I mean the gameplay opportunities are really huge. You can multiplayer, replace it with any kind of avatar you want, drop static objects in your living room and go visit them later. It's sort of crazy, lots of opportunity for innovation. Very cool stuff guys, don't miss any of our CES 2013 coverage. Make sure you're subscribed to Linus Tech Tips.