In honor of Force Friday, we teamed up with the engineers over at Sphero to bring you two exclusive teardowns of Sphero’s just-released-today Star Wars toys featuring R2-D2 and a brand new character featured in the upcoming movie, BB-9E.

When we first unboxed the little black droid called BB-9E, we thought to ourselves, “Is that an evil BB-8?” There’s no mistaking which side this mysterious new character plays on -- even its conic head is reminiscent of Darth Vader’s helmet!

BB-9E has many of the same features as the original BB-8 Sphero, so be sure to check out that teardown for a deeper breakdown of the components inside the body. Here's a quick look at the new droid (please excuse our poor driving skills):

For this teardown, we’re focusing in on 2 major features of interest:

1. Lights in the head - BB-9E’s head features a glowing red light and two small blue lights, powered wirelessly with an inductive coil

2. Weight Compensation - BB-9E’s head is heavier than BB-8 because of the new light features, and as such requires counterweights for balance

For our new readers, Fictiv is a manufacturing platform for part fabrication (including 3D printing and CNC machining) and our expertise is around the mechanical side of hardware development. For teardowns, we dig into the mechanical systems and leave the electrical analysis to our EE friends.