Technology

The Crafty Robot's Ross Atkin is bringing a new form of AI to the tech toy sector with his latest project, Smartibot. Ahead of ToyNews' deep dive into this fascinating world in the July issue, we catch up with Atkin to find out more about machine learning in toys.

Led by the Year of Engineering and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the initiative will give school children across the UK the chance to meet engineers and experience hands-on learning with LEGO Education.

The company has reportedly outlined its plans to make its toolkit for creating board games with virtual assistants like Alexa available for third party developers.

The firm will kick off with Carcassonne, released on the gaming platform this winter.

This is the first safe and creative digital experience offered by the LEGO Group and Tencent for Chinese children since the two forged a partnership in January this year.

The founder and managing partner of the strategy and innovation firm talks to ToyNews about the rise of the Connected Play landscape.

Children will be able to communicate with Amazon’s Alexa through a storytelling programme as they play with their building blocks.

Juniper Research says this is an increase of over 250 per cent, with toys, education and the domestic-aide sectors being key to the growth of consumer robotics in the coming years.

This year, the toy industry gatecrashed London Games Fest, thanks to a morning of talks organised by Mojo Nation. We caught up with the group's co-founder Billy Langsworthy to get his first reactions to the event.

The social media app has recently revealed functionality which will allow shoppers to make purchases directly through the app but research shows uptake has been slow.