Anki Drive

Many people have been asking us about the new Anki Drive, and whether we will be adding it to our racing lineup. Anki is a new type of racing game that was released in December of 2013, in which you use an I-phone or I-pad to control robotic cars that run on a special roll up race track. The track consists of a roll up vinyl mat with a pre-printed oval, and contains digital information that the cars read with optical sensors. Up to 4 cars can race at a time. These cars not only race, but they battle as well, and shoot each other with beams of light. When a car is “hit” it goes into a spin. You can learn more about Anki here.

As to whether Anki will be added to Races2U: This is a great technology, and a lot of fun. However, the limitations for commercial use may keep this from being a practical product for us to race on a regular basis.  It requires the use of a newer generation I-Phone or I-Pad for each car, as well as the downloaded app.  Currently it is not compatible with Android or Windows operating systems. At the moment there is only one track, and it is a fairly simple oval, and there are only 4 cars available. Lastly, the cars run on batteries, which need to be recharged after about 20 minutes of use, and take 10 minutes to charge. We would certainly consider adding this to our retail products, and an in-store demo would not be out of the question, but as far as commercial racing applications, that remains to be seen. We will certainly keep our eyes on this as it evolves.