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In the very packed 2014 Maker Faire Expo Hall, visitors were the first to discover a low-cost balancing robot designed as an aid to children’s education. “Cute” was the most common qualifier used by parents and children alike.Designed from the start as a low-cost teaching vehicle and experimentation platform, it is as easy to program, and uses the same programming language, as the well-liked Arduino. And just as for the Arduino, various boards, called “shields” in Arduino terminology, can be added for more robot functionality. One shield specially designed for Lil’Bot allows the robot to make various emoticon-like expressions.
For younger children, Lil’Blocks is a graphic programming language based on Blockly (designed by Neil Fraser at Google) and adapted to Arduino by Fred Lin (http://www.gasolin.idv.tw). Blockly is the language of choice for the Hour of Code, code.org’s ambitious program to teach children programming in an hour or less. Faithful to that philosophy, Lil’Blocks is children’s entry into programming a complex balancing robot using tasks as easy as assembling Lego bricks.
A Kickstarter campaign to fund the project is off to a vigorous start, reaching 24% of its funding goal within the first two days. Lil’Bot was conceived at the Mountain View, CA Hacker Dojo by Chris Hakim, a self-taught Silicon Valley hardware and software engineer.
Contact Info:
Name: Chris Hakim
Email: Send Email
Organization: Lil’Bot
Website: http://www.lil-bot.com
Release ID: 44999
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