WOWCube® Entertainment System is a first-in-class gaming console shaped as a reconfigurable cube which can be played by twisting, shaking and tapping. Many see it as a digital reincarnation of Rubik's Cube.

WOWCube® console and its father-son creator team have come a long way since it was conceived. In 2016, Savva Osipov joined his dad Ilya, and bought an Arduino single-board microcontroller kit to experiment with home-built digital entertainment devices.

Savva, who was 12 years old at the time, inherited his grandfather’s love for chess, and joined his dad in a sequence of simple scientific experiments from a young age. They spent lots of time together solving puzzles, building gizmos, and generally having a good time around science-themed activities, programming and electronics. Arduino enabled simple connection to a computer via USB cable and straightforward control of multiple external modules and sensors.

Ilya has pursued his passion in creating 3D puzzles for decades; one of his earlier mechanical-puzzle inventions was awarded a significant prize in a world-wide contest. Similarly, Ilya pursued a career and a number of very successful business ventures in the field of Human Computer Interaction, which studies human behavior in a computer environment. To date, he has published more than 20 research articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has served as a reviewer for a number of scientific publications in the field.

The Arduino kit meets both father’s and son’s needs: it can be easily connected to a computer via USB cable and simply programmed. The kit has many additional modules and sensors.

Savva and Ilya watched training videos on YouTube, laid out an Arduino kit and figured out how to hook up a set of displays and an electronic gyroscope. Then, Ilya wrote a simple code to simulate a ball rolling between the displays.

Savva, an avid fan of Rubik’s Cube, noticed that it would be more interesting to place displays on outward faces of a single cubicle transformable device. It would provide a unique and engaging user experience, unmatched by any existing technology. Game characters’ and objects moving between screens could be controlled through device transformations. It didn’t take Ilya long to realize that Savva’s idea is much harder to implement than to think up, but he was very excited with this challenge. That is how the concept of the WOWCube® Entertainment System was born.

After successfully searching, Ilya found the Sifteo Сubes development. An interactive gaming platform in the form of small cubes that are 'motion-aware' and 1.5-inch in size with touch screens. Despite the fact that Sifteo looked remotely similar, the idea of ​​the WOWCube® Entertainment System turned out to be original. “I saw that we were creating a new thing,” recalled Ilya. Along with the Rubik's Cube and Arduino, this development made in the MIT lab, also became the inspiration for Ilya when creating the future WOWCube® Entertainment System.

The first prototype of the WOWCube® system was made on an in-house 3D printer in 2017, just to prove the concept. In total, 4 basic prototypes and dozens of variations were made.

In the same year, Ilya submitted scientific publications where he described the WOWCube® Entertainment System and a number of similar devices and presented his unique device to the scientific community at the conference in University of California, Berkeley.

The initial problems to be solved were the mechanical rotation of the device, electrical and mathematical integrity and several technical issues. We needed to figure out how microprocessors would be placed inside the device, how the individual parts would understand their current relative position, how data would transfer and operations synchronize, plus, how the environment would work as a single device while performing distributed computing?

The main invention lies in the modules’ communication. The WOWCube® system is not a unified device. In the end, it consists of 8 modules, each with a separate processor. They are synchronized at the software level. Ilya and fellow developers built the operating system from scratch to allow each cube to act independently, to interact with other cubes and share data at the same time.

This CubiOs operating system can potentially scale up to handle as many cubes as necessary and in any configuration a licensee could want. It doesn't matter if it is a 2-by-2 or 3-by-3 model cube or even if it looks like a snake. The operating system will be able to manage and control how the cubes in the device interact, making it a powerful platform for al variety of potential devices.

Distributed computing occurs in parallel on 8 modules. The operating system maintains its integrity. At the same time, it allows you to reconfigure the device, and configuration can be changed all the time. Geometrically it is in constant change by the user.

Another big question was how to place contacts inside the device so that the elements of the cube could transfer energy to each other. Inspired by Apple’s MagSafe, Ilya designed magnetic connectors with self-orientating magnetic contacts, which, unlike MagSafe’s male to female connections, had unisex connectors. This allowed any part inside the cube to connect evenly and perfectly to each other, no matter how the cube is rotated.

For data transmission transmitter and receiver, RX and TX contacts are used. The receiver must be in contact with the neighboring transmitter, and the transmitter must be in contact with the neighboring receiver. This first scheme still exists today. Four magnetic contacts in the form of balls made of neodymium are located on each inner side of each module. Magnets, the closest to the center are minus, the furthest ones are plus. Because of this mechanism, magnetic balls reorient themselves at each turn and are magnetized to each other. They create a chain. No matter how you twist the cube, a minus always falls on a minus, and a plus on a plus.

The WOWCube® System has screens on all sides. Our cube is one of the most screen-covered devices on the planet. We have the maximum screen to area ratio of the device. Because they are from all sides.

“When I wrote the first C++ program for an early prototype, I was literally dizzy,” recalled Ilya. It was necessary to create mapping matrices of the faces of different screens and to ensure their re-calculation after any rotation done by the user. The first thing done was an analog of the game Digger. When the Digger began to successfully run from screen to screen, Ilya realized that the concept was right, and everything was feasible.

The cube does not have any buttons aside from the RESET switch on the bottom of the charging station. The charging station was invented much later. In the first version, there were USB plugs on the cube’s corners, later on the inner edges. It was necessary to turn the cube axis and charge a cube using two micro USB connectors. Then the contemporary dock station with a RESET button was developed. In addition to convenience, it became possible to reload the cube if errors occur.

Within a few weeks after creating the first prototype, Ilya with the help of a friend, patent lawyer Vadim Savvateev, applied for two patents for his invention: for the whole CubiOS system and unisex magnetic contacts. The CubiOS, Inc. company was registered in April, 2017.

The WOWCube® Entertainment System had a creator, a company, and patents. Now it was important to find investments for technology development. Ilya began to tell friends and colleagues about his new invention, to show it personally and by Zoom. People believed in the product and invested in it. The first $520,000 pre-seed round was raised in 2017.

Ilya hired a talented electronics engineer, Semyon Orlov, who applied the inventor's ideas into practice. He made the first versions of the WOWCube® System on STM 32 professional processors. The time has come to show the invention to people.

The first public presentation of the WOWCube® Entertainment System took place in Silicon Valley in 2018: in San Mateo at Makers Fair 2018 and at Silicon Valley Open Doors conference in Mountain View. Since then, the WOWCube® Entertainment System has been taking part in many expos and conferences. It became the company policy to show the product to the audience at tech expos and receive an honest opinion about it.

A fun fact is that until 2018 the WOWCube® Entertainment System was called CubiOs. We renamed it at the Maker Fair in Santa Clara, California. Our cube is a STEM certified gadget that is useful for children’s learning, curiosity, and education; it has a positive effect on the development of motor skills and cognitive thinking. Therefore, the cube has always aroused great interest among children and parents. The expo in Santa Clara was no exception. Children came to the company booth, saw the digital cube with games that you can twist and said with their eyes wide open: “WOW”, “COOL”. Ilya thought about renaming the CubiOs to WOWCube or COOLCube. He checked the domains, WOWCube was relatively free, and bought it for $1000. Then, the company applied for a WOWCube® trademark in the USA and most other countries. Since the company is registered as CubiOS, its name was not changed.

A year later (2019), Max Filin, an entrepreneur with more than15 years of experience in cutting edge consumer electronic devices, joined the WOWCube team as CEO. Soon after, the company began to actively collect the seed round, expand the team, develop new games, enter into contracts with potential distributors, and more. The first media reviews in various publications began to appear, and the first awards were received. The company started its global journey and continues to this day with plans to become an advanced gaming gadget for entertainment, education, stress-relief and helping people.