If you have seen the most recent trailer of the upcoming film "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," chances are that you have met the adorable BB-8 rolling around. It turns out that you can now take one home, as it is buried within the Force Awaken toy merchandise that Disney unveiled last Friday. It came with the "Millennium Falcon" drone that HNGN previously reported on.
It is difficult to categorize BB-8 as a toy since it is a basic robot with really big potential. It is actually based on an earlier product called Sphero, which is an orb that can be controlled by a smart phone. In collaboration with Disney, Sphero, the maker of the titular product, modified the technology and gave it a headpiece, which stays in place as the body rolls along.
Witnesses were abuzz with questions when a bigger version was demonstrated during the unboxing of the Force Awakens merchandise. People have been asking how the head stays put as the sphere it is perched on moves about, according to Yahoo! Tech. BB-8's developers explained that the head stays stationary through the use of midichlorians and magnets. The bigger version shown in the video below could also contain a gyroscope and accelerometer, according to Mashable.
Let's take another look at #StarWarsTheForceAwakens incredible #BB8. #starwars
A video posted by Lance Ulanoff (@lanceulanoff) on Apr 16, 2015 at 11:57am PDT
The BB-8 droid in the Force Awaken merchandise currently runs on a very simple AI that lets it display or express appropriate responses for certain events, such as when it hits the wall or when it "feels" joy, for instance. It can also interact with people by nodding or shaking its head to say "yes" or "no" and run independently through "patrol mode." The team behind BB-8 promised in an interview with The Verge that it will be further developed so that future iterations will be better and smarter.
Sphero BB-8 is now available in Apple retail stores, Best Buy and Sphero's website for $149.99.
