Lego Gives Its Analog Bricks a Digital Brain—With No Screen Time

LEGO is giving its famously analog bricks

a new digital brain.

The toy behemoth has revealed its new SMART Play platform

at CES in Las Vegas this week.

And the new tech all revolves around LEGO's patented sensor

and tech-laden SMART Brick,

a brick that gives the world's favorite

plastic play things a brain.

Now, this SMART Brick is the same size

as a standard 2 x 4 LEGO brick,

but it's capable of connecting to new SMART Minifigures

and SMART Tags,

and then interacting with these in real time,

adding sound and light effects

as kids and adults play with them.

LEGO isn't stupid,

so it's launching this new incarnation

in three Star Wars sets on March 1st,

hoping for a guaranteed hit from day one.

Now WIRED's pick of the three

is the $160, 962-piece Throne Room Dual set,

complete with three SMART Minifigs.

The combination of the brick brain plus connected Minifigs

will apparently let you recreate

the iconic final lightsaber battle

at the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

[LEGO set plays Imperial March]

The heart of the system is the SMART Brick's

custom-made chip, measuring just 4.1 millimeters,

running LEGO's bespoke Play Engine,

it can detect motion, orientation,

and magnetic fields,

and there's even a proprietary

Brick-to-Brick position system

to sense distance, direction,

and orientation between multiple SMART Bricks.

Other elements crammed into the eight stud brick

are an LED light array, accelerometers, light sensors,

and a sound sensor,

and even a miniature speaker,

which uses the brick's internal air spaces

to amplify the noise. [helicopter blade whirring]

Seven years of development have resulted

in SMART Bricks capable of creating a Bluetooth-based,

self-organizing network that requires no setup,

no app, no central hub,

nor external controllers,

and so no screen time at all.

LEGO said they didn't even want a power switch on the brick

or even a reset button,

and the SMART Bricks all recharge wirelessly

and stay powered even after years of no use.

LEGO claims one of the main aims of SMART Play

is to get kids and parents all playing with sets

for much longer through this new age of plastic interaction

and stop those brick bores

who build for display and no play.

[Jeremy mimics whooshing noises]

[whimsical music]

I built this.