iRobot's New Education Robot Makes Learning to Code a Little More Affordable
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I had the hardware, the aptitude, the interest, and the free time, but it just didn’t happen until I was in the right environment to give me a bit of initial hand-holding. I guess my point is, don’t just throw your kid in front of a computer and assume they will learn to code. They might end up writing fanfiction, playing an MMO, or trolling on 4chan instead.
But I got so interested in game programming that eventually a project struck with me and I kept with it and wrote code more than ten lines long.
The Ruby programming language and a little book(don't remember at the moment) from the public library was my gateway drug.
As a child, I went to the library, got a book on programming and was dying to learn how to do it but didn't manage to compile a single program for years.
A programming app, or a programming robot, or some other tailor made solution may well be the right solution for some of these kids.
I wonder how much, if at all, seeing the robot move in real life is beneficial vs simple onscreen display like Logo provided.
Though recently I've been exploring Minecraft Education Edition, and am wondering if that has similar benefits, even though it's not in the real world; is Minecraft 'real' enough?
Basically:
1. Capacitive touch zones (basically buttons?)
2. Bumpers
3. Light-sensors
4. Gyroscope
5. Accelerometer
6. Two wheels with encoders
7. Piezoelectric speaker and a couple lights
Not very interesting. It can wander around some with very minimal feedback. It can't communicate, it can't sense many parts of its environment, since its only ability to act is really its two wheels it can't interact outside of wiggling and some beeps and boops.
I'd appreciate some commentary from anyone with industry experience
how does this compare to other options in the field of educational robotics?
As a person whose job it is to help teachers teach kids computer science, it’s a really versatile tool. We’ve taught kids from year 3 with MakeCode all the way to the end of high school with micro python using the micro:bit. The teachers themselves (who often have less experience than the kids) even really get into it!
Edit: I was thinking about this problem recently. There is LEGO camp with their educational robots. Sets with power functions are great for the start. Then there are these educational toys like in the article. And I don’t believe in this at all. They will get boring soon and there is no way for upgrades. There are educational microcomputers like micro:bit. I think they are great if they were used in schools, but that part of education is parental topic in most countries. And there is dyi corner, I have electronics lab at home. I built a simple Arduino based vehicle with ultrasonic sensor that turned left if encountered obstacle 50 cm away. It was most popular toy for weeks! Despite duct tape and lack of aesthetics.
I can't tell most of my mates to build a robot for their kid to learn with. I can't support one I built myself. I CAN tell them to pick one of these up to help get their little monsters on their way to happily building SkyNet.
A lot of parents aren't going to DIY a robot for their kids. They don't have the skillset and aren't going to learn it for something their kid might not even enjoy dealing with.
They might recognize the Root rt0 as the spiritual successor to the Roamer and Turtle they grew up with in school though, if they were in the UK at least.
I enjoyed using a Turtle, which is basically an ancient massive tethered version of this, with the Logo programming language.
You can slap that Not-Lego plate on and grab a some Lego Technics, and suddenly you've fitted a rocket launcher and you're programming a tank.
They can then graduate to Lego Mindstorms or an Arduino or micro:bit or some Pi robotics kit afterwards.
And the Root rt0 will likely keep a good chunk of its value on resale.
The idea is to buy it and have your kids love it and outgrow it. It's the push that makes them move, if you will.
>Do you know what "nemesis" means?
Perhaps children aged 6 should be focused on reading and writing rather than worrying about Moravec's paradox on a $200 bleeping pile of plastic.
...and given a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum to play with, along with a few volumes of documentation. ;-)
YMMV, but ask geeks who grew up in the UK during the late eighties and early nineties and see what their opinion is.
Maybe it's less important now that things like Minecraft are so much more immersive than the tools we had "back in the day", but I wouldn't discount it so easily.
Show a kid how to create a small game and they quickly fall in love with software.
Some info about these is in the docs for the interfacing library I wrote: https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/roomba/
This round Root with the pen at first glance looks like an old Logo turtle robot, but has more features. And the optional Lego support is interesting.
(Lego has long had its own Lego Mindstorms microcontroller product series. And starting before that, MIT and some other universities used Legos in introductory robotics courses.)
It's nice to see iRobot still interested in education, and the Root looks promising. One encouraging sign would be if a child could design and build their own effectors and sensors, such as a gripper, out of Lego, and interface them pretty easily with the Root (preferably not only with the pen up/down mechanics).
Reading and writing are necessary to participate in society (such as read and sign contracts), that’s not the case for writing software.
But as far as I can see the reasoning is the following:
Because of competition in the global economy. There is a huge demand for skilled software engineers in the world, and that’s expected to continue to grow in the future. If you want to be able to compete with other countries then you want to have trained workers. Here the bet is that having an increase in software engineers would result in higher productivity, and generate value over time.
It’s also an easy sell to parents and people in general given that you can make really good money by writing software without killing yourself to the job.
I don't think EVERYONE needs these skills. Most people will never need them. But:
- I think getting underprivileged kids excited about coding/making games/robots/etc may be an excellent way to provide more kids with a good future.
- I _really_ wish more legislators had backgrounds in software. I think concepts like technical debt, KISS, code reuse, etc as well as the general method of translating business requirements to code are more applicable to that domain than generally appreciated.
I sure as heck hope that when my kids are career age - they're doing something a bit higher up the stack than programming. Even if it's meta-programming. Programming is a convoluted way of interacting with business logic.