Skip to main content current edition: International edition The Guardian - Back to home Become a supporter Subscribe Find a job Jobs Sign in Search Show More Close with google sign in become a supporter subscribe search find a job dating more from the guardian: change edition: edition International edition The Guardian - Back to home browse all sections close Artificial intelligence (AI) The Observer Artificial intelligence powers Anki Drive to pole position on the indoor racetrack A new car racing game uses robotics to bring the thrills and spills of Formula One into the home Anki cars Artificial intelligence (AI) The Observer Artificial intelligence powers Anki Drive to pole position on the indoor racetrack A new car racing game uses robotics to bring the thrills and spills of Formula One into the home Matt Weiner Mon 14 Jul ‘14 13.
00 BST First published on Mon 14 Jul ‘14 13.
00 BST It's a Wednesday, 6.
30am.
 The bedroom door slams open.
 My youngest son, three, shouts: "Daddy, can we play Anki Drive?
" His brother, five, is right behind him.
 This is not the first time I have heard this plea.
 For a week now I have been hostage to a kind of science-fiction version of Scalextric.
 Anki is a San Francisco robotics startup that was founded in 2010 but kept itself off the radar while it developed an AI gaming platform.
 Last year, it caused a minor furore at the Apple worldwide developers conference when Apple CEO Tim Cook invited the company's founders on stage to demonstrate their first consumer product: a car racing game that operates on Apple's operating system.
 The game was subsequently named one of Time magazine's inventions of the year.
 A mashup of Hot Wheels, Mario Kart and Tron, Anki Drive is very simple to play.
 All the action takes place on an eight-foot vinyl racetrack that will probably mean you have to pile up your living room furniture to lay it out.
 You race one of four small cars against either a friend or a robot car round the track for a set number of laps and the first past the chequered flag wins.
 Your car (8cm, glossy, shades of Knight Rider) is controlled using an app downloaded onto an Apple mobile device.
 Your iPhone's motion detectors enable you to use it like a steering wheel: swerving in and out of lanes.
 Meanwhile, you can "disable" or slow down your opposition with virtual weapons mounted on your car triggered by buttons on the phone interface.
 The idea is that the basic tenets of a physical racing game (go faster, steer well) are enhanced by the sophistication of video games (each car has unique characteristics; you can accrue weapons and better skills) and artificial intelligence (the cars improve as they "learn" from each race; anki means "learn by heart" in Japanese).
 Unboxing the kit, I shared the unfettered excitement of my sons (the older was literally hopping round the room).
 It's refreshing that this game is a tactile entity: played for real and not on screens and the kids were instantly gripped.
 Even when they weren't playing they were hypnotised by the smooth action and cheered on their favourite car with all the verve of a die-hard Formula One fan.
 Unlike Scalextric, where you were always retrieving cars that had flown off the slotted tracks, Anki cars (each has a 50mhz microprocessor, camera and infrared light) can "read" through the vinyl mat to work out their position so they always know where they are, where you are and as a result will never leave the track.
 This means any novice (even a three-year-old) can complete a race.
 The controls are simple enough to manage, if not exactly master.
 This is a plus for the kids: the AI whizzes the cars safely around while they happily mash the keypad with their sticky hands.
 After bedtime, I get the chance to get to grips with the more complex stuff; learning how to decelerate, tuck myself behind a robot car and nail him with my rotor cannon.
 Even for a big boy's toy, Anki Drive is expensive: £179 for a two car plus track starter kit; extra cars are £50.
 It's probably best suited to kids of about eight and up, and requires obsessive hours of play to get the best of the tech.
 But, no doubt, it's a leap forward.
 At the end of our first game, as all the cars unexpectedly scuttled into position of their own accord and a voice on my phone announced the winner, I felt the same weird chill I had when someone first showed me the swipe motion on a smartphone screen.
 Something from the future's here in my hand!
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