Tech Trend 247

Car aficinados, AI geeks — your new favorite toy has arrived. Hot Wheels has unveiled its AI Intelligent Race System, available for preorder as of Tuesday for $99.99. 

As you'd expect from Hot Wheels, the car designs are super sleek, though the tech side might be a little disappointing for all the hype about its "intelligent" features. 

The other big sell is that the toy is ready right out of the box, no smartphone needed. You get the track, two remote controls and two cars, one with a muscle-car-inspired silhouette, and one modeled after a sports car. All of the parts are detachable, so you can customize the car as you wish. It's purely for aesthetics, though — there aren't any parts that make the cars go faster. 

The models are on a 1/32 scale of an actual car, and are designed to function like actual race cars. So don't be surprised if your car skids or mimics an anti-lock braking system, or ABS. 

Now about the AI: It's a very broad term, and you might read about it in conversations about drones, the Turing test, Watson and even chatbots. 

But in Hot Wheels' case, its AI technology is similar to that of a Roomba, involving a light sensor that looks for contrast on a surface. In the Roomba's case, it allows the robot vacuum to look for dirt; for these cars, it allows them to stay on the supplied track. It's constantly adjusting their position so they stay on, looking for a specific color value about 200 times per second. 

The feature is pretty cool, especially if you're a beginner, but it can become pretty mundane — if the AI keeps the cars on the track, where's the challenge?

This is where their three different game modes help. One of them lets you play off-track, in a free-play mode where you can drive across any surface and unlock full speed. There's also a practice mode, which times you and records your best laps on the track, but you're racing yourself. 

Then there's championship mode, in which players can challenge each other, or an A.I. car that has three different skill levels. In this mode, you can also throw invisible obstacles at your opponents (imagine you're playing Mario Kart with ghosts). 

In the future, Hot Wheels says it wants to make the cars go faster,and introduce some different car models. They're hoping to bring some "recognizable" models like trucks and "exotic cars," though representatives didn't specify from which country. They're also going to come out with different accessory packs for the cars.

Another potential upgrade: changing the track layout, with different elevations, materials and graphics, though that will probably have to wait until the next racing season (read: next year).