MUMBAI: Sony Corp will release a digital music player that moves around on the floor, flaps speaker lids on its ends and flashes lights in time with music, on 29 September 2007. Christened Rolly, the palm-sized, egg-shaped gadget that weighs 300 grams, combines the company`s audio and robotics technologies.

The player has only two buttons, for switching it on and playing tunes. Volume and other functions are controlled by, among other methods, turning the player on the floor. A 1-gigabyte flash memory stores tunes downloaded from a Web site. Motions can be programmed with pre-packaged software, says a report in Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

The Rolly will sell for about 40,000 yen ($354).The smooth, white Rolly also can spin in place so fast it turns into a blur, and its sensors enable a user to control volume by turning the player clockwise or counterclockwise or switch tunes by pushing or pulling the gadget.The Rolly doesn`t have an American counterpart, but it will go up against Japanese robot maker ZMP Inc.`s Miuro at home. Miuro, which looks like a white ball caught inside an egg, wheels about in time to music when an iPod is locked onto it, adds an AP report.Sony plans to sell packages of moves and tunes online for Rolly. And users will be able to program the Bluetooth-capable product on a PC using software that analyzes music and produces choreography to match and then sends the programs to the Rolly, Sony said.The Rolly, which plays MP3 files, Sony`s own audio format called ATRAC as well as songs uploaded from CDs, can store more than 600 songs, though its capacity falls to as few as 100 when complex moves are added.Plans for sales outside Japan are not yet set, adds the AP report.