Bots_Alive Brings Sophisticated Brains to Cheap Robots

How do you make a robot toy that's both interesting and affordable? It's a hard problem: Making an interesting robot means giving it intelligence and creative autonomy, and giving a robot intelligence and creative autonomy is generally not compatible with it also being cheap. At CES a few weeks ago, we were introduced to Bots_Alive, a small company of roboticists who have managed to develop a robotic critter with a carefully thought-out animal-like personality. And by hacking an existing robot toy and using your phone as a brain, they're ready to sell it to you for 35 bucks. Bots_Alive is, essentially, selling a replacement brain for Hexbug Spider robots.