Ask HN: 3 yo loves robots. What robot for 4th bday? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 3 yo loves robots. What robot for 4th bday?

16 pointsMrTortoise24 comments

She loves creative play,telling stories, drawing etc.

So something that she can play with without it being active would be huge.

But also something where she can make it do things to build stories around and bring other toys into.

They have loads of transformers, hotwheels, playsets and Lego. She loves vector but can't talk clearly enough but he is her little friend.

Any ideas? Please don't respond if you are going to suggest 'go outside' etc, it's not helpful.

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Anki Cozmo is cute and has a pretty solid set of features

Anki is no longer making robots.

There are still some around, it is a fantastic toy, even adults love him.

They have committed to continuing to run the servers.

Yeah. Can confirm our Cosmo still works fine (iOS). The kids love him.

Pretty cool tech too. Wish someone would have taken it over.

We have a vector. He's like our pet ...

I did buy my kid Lego Boost.

I chose this, because I like robots as well, we already have Lego, she loved playing with duplo and with help could manage to build a smaller 5+ lego set.

It is not cheap, but you can build several things out of it (I remember a Jhonny 5 style robot, a buldozer/tank(?), a guitar and animatronic cat.

The programming interface is simmilar to Scratch Jr, and she can manage it fairly well (mostly playing with the sampler set included with some of the builds, i.e. when robot-cat is supposed to sing :-)

The builds itself are fairly complicated so you'd be doing most of those.

Yeah just got this for my 6yo, he's enjoying it but v hard for him to build. ... Then the whole needing an unlocked tablet thing.

Yep. That is why we mostly end up in the music section :) You don't really need to rebuild i.e. the guitar for it to be a prime noise-maker :D

I have a soon-to-be 2 yo, so I can't help you, but maybe I can learn something from you. Are there any robotic toys suitable for a 2 yo? For now we play Duplo, role play, etc.

Probably a bit young.

Kids are v different. One of mine would get bored quick because they move and it messes up her games.

The other would enjoy. We had a robot that took cards and had sine games on it. Both looked that can't remember it's name though

Check out Ozobot. It’s tiny and will follow lines and take actions based on colored dots.

Super simple and doesn’t have the distractions associated with iPads, etc. My son’s school used it for mapping unit... each team of kids drew a pirate treasure map for the bot to follow.

My parents bought a few sphero bots for my kids when they were young... they are a little too abstract for most kids until about 2nd grade. Now (age 8), he loves the Sphero Ollie.

The Ozobot is probably too delicate for a three-year-old.

The Sphero is solid, however I agree w/ your views on it.

We’ve found the best bang for buck is the Photon Robot.

Another option is the Cubetto which is also age appropriate.

Credentials: Owner of (and perform testing on) a 7, 5 and 3yo + littlebird.com.au which sells all of the above.

Thanks for the pointer to you site and the Photon bot... definitely will check that out! I will say that Ozobot has survived 2-3 years with 2nd graders, but would agree that it isn't the most durable.

Kids usually like real things better than things meant as toys. Get her a floor cleaner robot. Let her use it for her messes.

Lol we thought about that but my eldest put his hand in vacuum once. Got friction burns from brushes ...

So something like that unsupervised is a bit worrying for us.

I saw this at BETT in January - very clever as you don't use a compputer/iPad etc to program it. Just the cards https://kubo.education/

Yeah I've been looking at that.

Looks quite good

Lego Mindstorms, it's something you can do together at first.

Check out Lego First Lego League for when they are a little older.

Seconding checking out FIRST - their youngest program, Lego League Jr., starts at age 6. FIRST has excellent robotics programs, especially at the middle and high school level.

If you're in the US there's a pretty good chance of finding a team local to you [1]. Even if there isn't, creating one is straightforward, although a little pricey [2].

It looks like the FLL Jr. program uses the WeDo 2.0 kits, which look pretty similar to Mindstorms but at a lower cost.

[1] https://www.firstinspires.org/team-event-search

[2] https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/flljr/start-a-team

Lego have just launched Lego Spike - supposed to be a bit more plug'n'play than Mindstorms so maybe better for younger kids. Haven't looked at it in detail

That looks like it's the step after boost. It's more general and has more interesting bits from the pictures.

Bit old for someone that young I think .... Although I'll try her on the boost stuff I bet she would love it actually

I'd go against mindstorms, that is way to advanced for a 4yo. If you want to go lego, Boost or WeDo is better :-)

I especially went with Boost because I remember debugging minstorms at school and I really didn't want to interupt our play-time with a debugging session :D

That thing with a Nintendo Switch and cardboard? Nintendo Labo?

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