Lego Smart Bricks introduce a new way to build — and they don’t require screens

Lego introduced its new Smart Play system at CES on Monday, including interactive, responsive Legos to the famously analog franchise.

The Sensible Play system features a 2×4 brick, Sensible Tag tiles, and Sensible Minifigures. The Sensible Bricks and Minifigures can sense close by Sensible Tags, that are 2×2 studless tiles with distinctive digital IDs that inform the Bricks and Minifigures find out how to act.

If the Sensible Tag is available in a set for constructing a helicopter, for instance, then the Sensible Brick will mild up and make propeller sounds that will assist carry a helicopter to life. Its built-in accelerometer would make these lights and sounds extra in keeping with the way you’re really enjoying with the helicopter, for the reason that Brick will have the ability to sense when the helicopter is zooming by means of the sky or turned the wrong way up.

The Sensible Bricks are powered by a patented ASIC chip, which is smaller than the scale of a single Lego stud. The chip makes use of near-field magnetic positioning to acknowledge the Tags round it, in addition to a miniature speaker, accelerometer, and LED array. Lego additionally developed a Bluetooth-based protocol referred to as BrickNet, which permits a number of Sensible Bricks to acknowledge one another and function in tandem. The corporate claims that BrickNet is protected by enhanced encryption and privateness controls (all of which is critical, however think about a world the place hacking into toys wasn’t a priority!).

There’s no setup required to pair the weather of the Sensible Play system, making it straightforward for teenagers to get began — and fogeys can be happy to notice that there are not any screens concerned within the Sensible system in any respect. Nevertheless, Lego’s web site says that there can be a Sensible Tag for animating Lego bogs, so… there’s that.

Lego’s first two Sensible Play units — that are each Star Wars-themed — will launch on March 1, although preorders open on Friday. The “Luke’s Crimson 5 X-wing” constructing set will retail for $69.99, whereas the bigger “Throne Room Duel and A-wing” set will price $159.99. These units use the Sensible Play system to animate characters like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, permitting them to work together with Sensible Tags, which allow Lightsaber duels amongst different Star Wars-related capabilities.