Lego’s Smart Brick Gives the Iconic Analog Toy a New Digital Brain

At CES in Las Vegas today, Lego has unveiled its new Smart Play platform, aimed at taking its distinctly analog plastic blocks and figures into a new world of tech-powered interactive play—but crucially one without any reliance on screens.

Smart Play revolves around Lego’s patented sensor- and tech-packed brick. It’s the same size as a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but it is capable of connecting to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags and interacting with them in real time. By pairing these components, kids big and small can create context-appropriate sounds and light effects as they play with the Danish company’s toys.

For example, launching on March 1, the $100 Lego Star Wars Smart Play Luke’s Red Five X-Wing 584-piece building set will feature two Smart Minifigs—Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia—plus five Smart Tags that will offer up laser-shooting sounds, engine sounds, and light effects, as well as refueling and repair sounds. All of the sounds are coordinated by the set’s central Smart Brick brain.

Two more Lego Star Wars Smart Play sets drop on the same day, but all three are available for preorder from January 9. One is a 473-piece Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter kit ($70) with ion engine sound effects, but the pick of the three could well be the $160, 962-piece Throne Room Duel set with three Smart Minifigures of Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Luke Skywalker. The combination of the brick brain plus connected figures will apparently let players recreate (or indeed rewrite) the final lightsaber battle—complete with humming laser sword sounds—between Luke and Vader at the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. You can even listen to “The Imperial March” as Emperor Palpatine watches the fight from his throne.

Lego’s 962-piece Throne Room Duel set comes with three Smart Minifigures of Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Luke Skywalker.

Photograph: Courtesy of Lego

Lego is claiming this Smart Play platform developed in house by the company’s Creative Play Lab team in collaboration with Capgemini’s Cambridge Consultants “features more than 20 patented world-firsts within its technology.”

The heart of the system is the Smart Brick’s custom-made chip, measuring smaller than a standard Lego stud. Other elements crammed into the eight-stud brick are an LED light array, accelerometers, light sensors, and sound sensor, and even a miniature speaker.

The internal battery will supposedly work even after years of inactivity, and to avoid any need for cable access to the Smart Brick once it’s built into a beloved creation, Lego has also added wireless charging. Indeed, Lego has made a charging pad that will power up several Smart Bricks simultaneously.