The unofficial BB-8 toys that makers have been building were based off of the Sphero toy but as it turns out the officially released one is not.  As it turns out it was a team from Creature Animatronics who created the toy for Disney, a team recently talked about because of their large sized hexapod robot.  If you haven't picked one up yet you have at least heard about it in your travels on the net today and as it turns out we do not know all the tricks it will be capable of yet.  According to Disney they will release more features for the app that interfaces with the robot as the release of The Force Awakens gets closer.  Check out the links at Hack a Day for more information.

"As it turns out, it was actually built in Pinewood by the Creature Animatronics (CFX) team which includes [Matt Denton] — He’s the guy who built the Mantis Robot. A hacker / engineer — not a big toy company."

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