Smartibot is an AI-enabled robot you build yourself, out of card – or a potato

A future filled with robots would be less terrifying if they were all like Smartibot (£35). This grinning android starts life as a flat-pack cardboard kit. Put Smartibot together and it trundles about, directed by an app. Or your phone can become its brain, at which point Smartibot uses “the latest AI” to respond to objects – and an elastic band to stop said brains inconveniently falling off. Two further robots – a unicorn and (given that this is a British invention) Teabot – can be constructed from what’s in the box. But Smartibot’s guts can be used to make robots from pretty much anything – including toys or the contents of your fridge. With 14 motors, Smartibot can transform a remote-controlled car into an autonomous vehicle, or your groceries into a deranged vegetable parody of The Terminator. “I’ll be snack.”

Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.