Lego's construction sets have been a fantastic choice for analog play for several decades now. These interlocking building blocks are set to get way more interesting with the inventive toy company's new Smart Play system that features electronics-packed bricks and minifigures for more immersive playtime.
It's pretty nifty: the new pieces can respond with light and sound to interactions like motion and also proximity to other bricks. That can add a whole other dimension to the way builders play with the structures, creatures, and vehicles they dream up.
First off, there's a 2 x 4 Smart brick that has responsive lights, a color-recognition scanner that can sense its surroundings, and a sound synthesizer that can play almost any sound through a tiny built-in speaker.
Next, a Smart Tag (which takes the form of a small flat tile) tells the Smart Brick how to respond during play, by transmitting data about what sort of object or creature it should emulate – like a monster truck or a dinosaur. Each Smart Tag acts as a key for specific reactions and sounds, and these can also unlock mini-games with missions and goals.
Finally, there are Smart Minifigures that each have their own personality traits, and react uniquely to the environment they find themselves in with their mood and sounds. For example, you could have heroic or nervous characters who respond differently to entering an unexplored cave.
The Tags and Minifigures don't do a lot on their own. Instead, they activate the Smart Brick's functions. The Brick's speaker plays sounds to express a nearby Minifigure's personality; when a Brick is placed on top of or near a Tag, it'll take directions to do things like turn into a helicopter.
You can see the system in action in this hands-on clip from Beyond the Brick below:
That sounds like a blast for kids and adults with wild imaginations and a penchant for make-believe. This tech has been in the works since 2017, with the goal of making the system easy to get into, avoid the need for complex setup, work without scripted play (where you'd only be able to do a finite number of things with the bricks in a fixed sequence), and fit into compact bricks compatible with existing Lego blocks.
The company says it created a custom silicon chip to make this all work, along with a positioning system invented in-house. Essentially, it allows every Smart Brick to know its position in relation to other Smart pieces, enabling it to react to their presence, and know in which direction it was facing.
It also knows if it's being flung through the air, or swung from a rope – and it can react accordingly with sound and lights. An onboard synthesizer manipulates a small set of core sounds to mimic everything from the roar of a jet plane to the flushing of a toilet through a little speaker in the Brick. That means it can produce a virtually limitless range of sounds to enhance play, based on what's programmed into the Smart Tags and Minifigures. That's 25 patents and a whole lot of ingenuity in action.
This tech will first appear in three Star Wars-themed sets, open to builders as young as 6 years of age. These range from nearly 500 pieces to around 1,000 pieces, and you can expect all kinds of cool stuff from the franchise: Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Princess Leia Minifigures, X-Wing and TIE Fighter Tags, and Lightsaber duels. Pricing ranges from US$70-$160, and you can get your hands on them starting this March.
What's especially neat is how the Smart Play system doesn't involve any screens – neither in the hardware sense like a display on the bricks, nor in the software sense of having to program or load up content for the Bricks. That lets kids get right down to playtime, without the danger of having to fire up a phone or tablet and risk getting distracted by feeds. So while it's a bit more technological than traditional Lego sets, it's all still analog play. I haven't built Lego stuff in years, but this seems like a great reason to dive back in.
Source: Lego
