Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Disney Accelerator Connects Robot Startup, New Star Wars Movie
In one of the first concrete examples of the benefit of participating in the local Disney Accelerator, one of the first companies to participate in the Techstars driven program in Los Angeles--Sphero--is apparently behind the cool, rolling robot, BB-8, which is heavily featured in the upcoming Star Wars movie. According to Fortune, Sphero's robot was discovered by Bob Iger when he was mentoring Sphero as part of the first Disney Accelerator class. Sphero has actually been working on its rolling robots since 2010, when it was known as GearBox, and also went through Techstars' early startup accelerator classes.