Name: Lego announces new ’smart brick’ in Las Vegas | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-02-28T12:03:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 30 s
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From a carpenter's workshop in Denmark to a global icon of creativity, Lego has been teaching generations how to build, imagine and experiment.

Adverbs of degree

Even the name comes from the Danish words leg, goat, meaning play.

Well, now the company best known for simple plastic bricks is adding something new to the mix.

Packed with sensors, lights, sound and motion, it is designed to bring physical play into a new tech powered dimension.

The brick is packed with tremendous amount of intelligence.

The whole system that we introduced today, that we showed, which is the brick and the tags and the interactive Minifigs, has over 20 different patents associated with them.

So it's very proprietary technology, but essentially it's a super intelligent brick.

I gave it a go at the launch in Las Vegas.

If you just put this first tag onto the smart brick.

Now we start the magic, because if you actually turn the brick a little bit around, you will actually see that the sound is actually responding to how you move the brick.

I think you need to fly it a bit in the air.

Do you feel that it's responding to how you're actually moving it around?

What happens if you turn that upside down?

The smart brick is part of a wider smart ecosystem where it connects to tags and interactive minifigures and then responds in different ways.

Play out a little story for you so you can see how it works.

So now we have a day live of our auto friends here, the robber and the policeman.

And then when the policeman is in the front seat and drive, then you will get it.

Now, of course, it's the policeman in the front seat, so now it will be chasing the rubber.

But a potential issue for creative kids who want to play for a long time is battery life, which only lasts between half an hour and 45 minutes.

A simple way of thinking about it is the brick is a bit like a console.

It's something that doesn't have a particular play experience.

It just has a lot of capabilities that can be used for many play experiences.

And both the tag and the minifigure are the play experience.

So now we bring each dog to life, as you can see, and

we will have our mother dog, as you can see.

So they're having fun over here because mother dog is looking away, but

what happens if she's actually looking at them?

The brick has a sensor, a light sensor, a color sensor, but

it doesn't say what to do with a light sensor or a color sensor.

The tag has some code that says when it's dark, turn the light on, when it's light, turn the light off.

The brick is the broad capabilities of sensing the light and responding and communicating.

The first collaboration that LEGO are doing with the smart brick is with Star Wars, a partnership that they've had for 25 years.

It seemed to go down really well with the adults here in the room.

But the big test will be in March when it's released for children.

I think you want me, but will the brick encourage creativity amongst children rather than a scripted experience?

You've obviously tested this technology with children already, but

what's your expectation when the product does come to market?

We want to see this platform starting to grow into how the fans are actually experiencing the LEGO system and play.

We know that kids love mash ups, so they will take different sets, mash them together, they will bring different characters into, you know, a scenario, even though they might come from different worlds.

And this just gives them an opportunity to take it to another level.

There have been concerns about the new tech enabled products undermining the distinct simplicity of the plastic brick in a digital world.

Is LEGO feeling the pressure to stay relevant in the digital age?

Yeah, actually we have not looked at it as a threat.

We've looked at digital as a massive opportunity and we really embraced it.

Rather than looking at it as digital screens, games, opportunities for engaging experiences, we're looking at technology.

And what's the advancement in technology enabling us to do?

And I think what we've done today is shown interactivity that can work itself seamlessly into physical products.

And in this connected world that we live in, LEGO is betting that smarter bricks don't replace imagination, just blow into the brick, they just give it more to play with.

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Lego announces new ’smart brick’ in Las Vegas | BBC News

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