Wired:
When I was kid, I had Star Wars toys—but they weren’t “smart” and most of them weren’t even battery powered. But kids these days have access to awesome toys like this remote controlled BB-8 (by Sphero) from the Star Wars VII movie. It looks pretty cool.
But how does it work?
If you prefer to think it works by magic, don’t read this article. But even after reading, the mechanism is still pretty cool.
It’s a neat little toy, but I think having no onboard sound is a dealbreaker. One of the best things about astromech droids (or whatever class of droid BB-8 falls under) is their chatter, and this one’s is dependent on whatever device you’re using to control him. So unless you remain very close by, his noises are going to be noticeably removed from BB-8 himself.
If they ever make a second version with a speaker built in, I am absolutely down.
And because it’s Wired, half the comments on that article are dismissive nerds claiming that they could’ve built the thing if they’d wanted to.