Kids

Toys today include robots, drones and AR, and if you’re lucky you can trick the kids into learning some useful skills along the way. New Atlas rounds up the best tech toys of 2018, which could make for some great last-minute gift ideas for the young’un in your life.

MAD Architects blends old and new with its aptly-named Courtyard Kindergarten. The project transforms an 18th Century Chinese courtyard into a kindergarten topped by a play area on the roof.

Having entertained Star Wars fans with a series of movie tie-ins, Sphero's newest mini robot swaps the movie theater for the classroom. The Sphero Bolt is a programmable rolling droid with a bright LED matrix display, accessible coding apps, and new ways to automate the bot's actions.

Toy start-up PlayShifu has unveiled Plugo, a gaming platform that hooks up to a tablet and uses a range of tactile toys to play games that will “trick” the kids into studying math or vocabulary.

​As Amazon targets children with the release of its Echo Dot Kids Edition, concerns are being raised over the effects voice assistants could be having on children. Is teaching kids how to politely command Alexa enough, or are there long-term developmental consequences to children using such devices?

To keep 21st century kids interested, classic toys have been getting high-tech makeovers lately. Now, a new company known as Blok.Party is targeting tabletop gaming with PlayTable, a tablet-like gaming console that uses physical pieces and runs an operating system based on a blockchain.

Many synthesizers are aimed squarely at adults, but hardware for youngsters occasionally comes along that's capable of satisfying grown ups, too. Such is the case with Blipblox, a music-making toy for kids which looks like so much fun that parents might just end up playing it themselves.​

Everybody wishes they were a kid again sometimes, and that feeling only gets stronger when you look at how cool toys are nowadays. New Atlas rounds up some of the best and most high-tech toys to help you spoil the kids this festive season (or yourself – we won’t tell anybody).

Meet Geio, an app-controlled battlebot that you drive from a first-person view to duke it out in a kind of robot laser tag match. New Atlas took one of these robots for a lonely test drive.

​Glasgow's Curious Chip has today launched an edutainment handheld gaming device aimed at getting youngsters coding, tinkering and experimenting. Pip has been created to give the coders and makers of tomorrow the building blocks they need today.​

When Sony first released a cute robot dog back in 1999, the world went crazy for it. But all good things must come to an end, and the bots were discontinued in 2006. Now Sony's bringing the aibo back, and it looks better than ever. It's also quite a different beast to its playful ancestors.

The PlayStation DualShock controller has kept the same basic shape for over 20 years now, but they can be hard for kids to wrap their little hands around. Hori has unveiled the Mini Wired Gamepad, a licensed PS4 controller with a child-friendly form factor and a pocket-money price tag.