Anki Drive smartphone racing game gets new cars, modes, and an Android version

The Anki Drive smartphone racing game is getting software and hardware updates today that enhance its game experience. It will also be coming out on Android devices starting in October.

With Anki Drive, you use your smartphone to control a car racing around a track against robotic cars with sophisticated artificial intelligence. The latest upgrade shows how it’s possible to launch a digital hybrid toy and upgrade it over time.

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With Anki Drive, you roll out a mat on the ground that serves as a race track. You can place two cars down on the track that will start driving around on their own. Then those vehicles will adapt and learn how to compete better. You can then control the game through the iOS app, which enables you to steer your own car and fire vehicle weapons. While the cars can keep themselves racing around the track, you can make them do tight or wide turns. Founded by robotics experts at Carnegie Mellon University, Silicon Valley startup Anki has worked on the technology for six years and has raised $50 million.

Anki Drive will be available on select Samsung Android smartphones in October. The Anki Drive Starter Kit will be available for $149 on Anki.com starting today and at Amazon, Apple Stores, Best Buy, GameStop, and other select retailers later this week. That price is a discount compared to the previous $199 price. With the starter kit, you get a race mat, tire cleaner, two cars, charging cases, and a charger.

The iOS version has been out since last year. The company is releasing new updates, including a team mode where humans can team up to beat the A.I. car, and a balance mode, where experienced drivers can race against beginners. Anki is also introducing a new car, the Spektrix, which is a kind of trickster vehicle.

Designed by Harald Belker (creator of the Batmobiles used in Batman movies), Spektrix “not only looks mischievous, he is mischievous,” said Mark Palatucci, the chief product officer at Anki. “Mischief and sabotage are key to Spektrix’s prowess, with clever hacks set to wreak havoc and dominate the competition,” he added.

The Spektrix car has a scrambler signal that messes up a nearby opponent’s steering, causing the opponent to lose control. The Spektrix also has a Chaos Pulse, a scrambler upgrade that causes the victim’s weapons and items to fire uncontrollably. The Spektrix car costs $70 on Anki.com. It will be available in the U.S. at Amazon, Apple Stores, Best Buy, GameStop, and other select retailers later this week and in the U.K. at Harrods, Selfridges, Dixons Carphone, Apple.com, GAME, The London Science Museum, and more for £50 in early October.

Palatucci said that any combination of up to four human or A.I. players can race against each other with the latest iOS update. Starting in early October, drivers can sign up for an account with a “Department of Robot Vehicles”  to save all their stats, log in on other devices, and reserve a unique driver name.

The design of Anki Drive is clever. The track mat has an ink that is embedded with a code. That tells the car where it is on the track and where it is relative to other cars. Each car also a tiny camera under it that can read that information. (Yes, this is why the game costs $200.) The cars have a 50-megahertz processor, a multicolor LED, and a Bluetooth low-energy radio to communicate with the smartphone. Anki says the cars can drive so precisely that the real-world equivalent would be driving down a highway at 250 miles per hour with a tenth of an inch clearance on either side.

You can use the free iOS app to build the character of the car. The cars are able to pass up each other, block opponents, or nudge a rival. And they do so by thinking on their own. The starter kit comes with two cars, one named Kourai and another called Boson. You can buy other cars for $69 each.

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Anki Drive works with the iPhone 4S and up, the iPod Touch (fifth generation and up), the third-generation iPad and up, and the iPad Mini.

The company’s backers are Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Two Sigma. The name Anki means to “learn by heart.”