Lego brings real robotic bricks to life for PlayStation

Sony and has been experimenting to create robotic Lego bricks that can be controlled with a PlayStation controller.

There are already a few ways that you can make Lego robotics, including Lego Mindstorms — the latest iteration of which includes support for smartphone control — and more recently, a Kickstarter to get Raspberry Pi in on the action. The toy company, however, seems to be seeking new ways to make Lego robotics accessible.

The latest is a collaboration with Sony to create a range of bricks called "Toy Alive". Unveiled at an open house at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, the bricks are embedded with various electronics that you can control with your PlayStation controller, including motors for mobility, actuators that can destroy Lego creations and tiny cameras that can broadcast to tablets and smartphones.

The trick is to make the pieces simple enough that children can easily hook them up and operate them, while the electronics need to be small enough to be used with Lego.

Alas, Toy Alive is still only in experimental stages at present, and Lego and Sony have no firm plans to release the product to a consumer market at this time. Still, it's an intriguing idea. We've already seen Lego come to gaming consoles in a proliferation of titles — it would be awesome to see gaming consoles come to Lego.

Via www.toplessrobot.com