I got the original Anki Drive over Christmas and the kids love it, it's pretty impressive. My kids also race Mini-Z's and they picked this up instantly. It's more like slot cars with multiple lanes that you can steer between, the cars stay on the track by themselves. The best part is the virtual battles between AI cars or human drivers/teams, and all the various weapon upgrades and tech upgrades (such as speed boosters, shields, rails guns, etc.).
The biggest downside is the cost, the starter kit is $150 (I was lucky and scored the $99 Amazon deal over Thanksgiving) and each additional car is $50. We only have the basic oval track, with these new modular tracks things should be much more exciting.
Very cool. Price isn't bad. Your average quality slot car set costs more than that. Is the speed proportional, like remote control or do you have to have preloaded apps to make the car go faster, like the weapons you mentioned? So you can change lanes at any time? Seems like there was something similar on the market a few years back. Cars that were set up like slot cars with a slotted track. Pushing a button on the controller allowed the cars to momentarily pull up the slot pin and allow you to change to another slot.
Modular tracks will be a great addition. Love modular!
Very cool. Price isn't bad. Your average quality slot car set costs more than that. Is the speed proportional, like remote control or do you have to have preloaded apps to make the car go faster, like the weapons you mentioned? So you can change lanes at any time? Seems like there was something similar on the market a few years back. Cars that were set up like slot cars with a slotted track. Pushing a button on the controller allowed the cars to momentarily pull up the slot pin and allow you to change to another slot.
Modular tracks will be a great addition. Love modular!
Everything is controlled through the bluetooth iPhone/iPad app which acts as your remote (one for each car, which you need to provide). There is a proportional slider for speed, and steering (switching lanes) is done by tilting the phone left or right. Switching lanes can occur anywhere on the track - the track is flat vinyl (no rails or physical lanes) encoded with location information, which the cars read with a (I think IR) sensor. Check the Anki website for some video demos.
The magic is really in the app to car to track integration; at all times the apps (on multiple iPhones) know where the various cars are on the track and also with respect to each other. This lets things like weapons and hit detection work. The cars start out with a basic set of weapons, and as you play more you unlock more weapons and abilities (tractor beam, turbo speed boost, U-turn reverse drive, etc.). It's nice as they will be able to add new car abilities simply through firmware, which is what it looks like they are doing with this next version.
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