We’ve seen a lot of strange stuff. But we’ve never seen anything to make us believe that there’s one-all powerful Force controlling everything…unless it’s gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism.
And now we’ve seen one all-powerful Force controlling Sphero’s adorable BB-8 toy.
At CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), Sphero revealed a new wristband, the Star Wars Force Band, to either enhance or replace the app that controls BB-8. This wearable helps us mimic the power of the Force by having BB-8 respond to our gestures.
And when it isn’t making the new hero of Star Wars: The Force Awakens obey our commands (insert evil laugh) with its not-so-secret insignia, the Force Band can obviously be used to hitch a lift to the next Resistance gathering.
Sphero’s video, below, shows us a demo of the Force Band, which makes us regret we never had this in our childhoods.
As some of you may not know, BB-8 was based off of Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept for R2-D2. As McQuarrie once said, “I think Artoo was just described as a small robot. I thought of him as running on a giant ball bearing—just a sphere, a circle, wheel-like. He had gyros so he could go in any direction on this ball.” But that was back in the dark times, the mid-1970s. Ultimately, R2-D2’s design was ball-bearing free.
According to Sphero, the Force Band uses Bluetooth, which means in theory that it should work with any Bluetooth devices. Hopefully, there will eventually be an app for those of us who already have powered up our wrists with Apple and Android watches.
Feature Image Source: Sphero/YouTube