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iRobot's New Education Robot Makes Learning to Code a Little More Affordable
- hayksaakian 6y agothis reads a little too much like a press release I'd appreciate some commentary from anyone with industry experience how does this compare to other options in the field of educational robotics?
- turnerc 6y agoUnfortunately I am yet to see evidence of these new "coding robots" actually providing educational benefit, they seem to be more of a distraction from the fundamentals of maths and science, and an even greater burden on an already stretched education system budget. 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.
- userbinator 6y agoPerhaps children aged 6 should be focused on reading and writing ...and given a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum to play with, along with a few volumes of documentation. ;-)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kiba 6y agoI doubt parents rich enough to afford this are overstretch. It doesn't seems especially useful though.
- Nexxxeh 6y agoI found its spiritual predecessors, the Turtle and the Roamer, and the programming language LOGO, to be helpful in learning maths and programming at an early age. I then moved to BASIC. Then Pascal, then Delphi. 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.
- elil17 6y agoLearning to code just got even more affordable: instead of spending $129 on a toy robot (which you still need a device to use), I download Scratch or one of many other free learning oriented coding tools.
- beenBoutIT 6y agoThe kids with parents who buy them the nice robots learn less and lose out in the long run. A used ThinkPad(well under $100) and an active Internet connection is all anyone needs get started.
- ajzinsbwbs 6y agoI had internet access since I was about 10, used the internet constantly though my teenage years, and did great in math and science in school (winning contests and the like). I was also interested in computing and thought it would be cool to know how to code. I even tried to follow some tutorials to learn, but I guess they didn’t explain the tooling so I never managed to run my code. I was missing some tiny experience of running a compiler that would change coding from a thing I’d read about to a thing I’d actually do. I didn’t actually learn to code until I took a computer science class in college. I took it up quickly, and have since had a very good career as a software engineer. 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.
- kiba 6y agoGot lucky. Never did all these things. 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.
- laurieg 6y ago
- baron816 6y agoI'm not totally sold on the merits of teaching kids to code. I didn't learn how to code until I was 27 and turned out fine.
- turnerc 6y agoI completely agree here, it seems like they are just playing into education's concept of code=STEM job, or maybe it's a new Roomba recruitment drive...
- czbond 6y agoI'm going to be downvoted if I don't preface this statement: CompSci, know quite a few languages well enough. Good at it. 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.
- imtringued 6y agoThey already do. We don't have to touch a single assembly statement in our entire lives if we don't want to.
- czbond 6y agotouche ;)
- ponker 6y agoWhy teach kids how to do anything? Why teach them math, swimming, writing, eating healthy, etc? You can find people who didn’t learn any of this stuff until they were 27 and “turned out fine.”
- numpad0 6y agoIs this the replacement for classic 6xx Roombas with DIN remote port?
- neilv 6y agoIn addition to hacking via the DIN port in Roombas, iRobot did some iRobot Create models, which were strictly educational robots. Creates were mostly Roomba hardware without dirty vacuum cleaner parts, and with some additional features. They also did an optional microcontroller at one point, which plugged into the Create, to supplement the built-in. Some info about these is in the docs for the interfacing library I wrote: https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/roomba/ 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).
- mensetmanusman 6y agoWish they had released their lawn mowing robot this year. Another covid death.
- barbecue_sauce 6y agoDon't other companies already have those?
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThey use annoying wires to find a boundary. We need wire-free systems :)
- ianbicking 6y agoHere's the specs on it: https://store.irobot.com/default/root/irobot-root-rt0/RT00020.html https://store.irobot.com/default/root/irobot-root-rt0/RT0002... 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.
- czbond 6y agoMore affordable than free....?
- javagram 6y agoThis is basically a modern “Turtle Robot” similar to Logo, I guess. I wonder how much, if at all, seeing the robot move in real life is beneficial vs simple onscreen display like Logo provided.
- laurieg 6y agoThis reminds me of the Roamer Robot [1] which was in my primary school in 1995. http://www.valiant-technology.com/uk/pages/roamer_home.php http://www.valiant-technology.com/uk/pages/roamer_home.php
- bonestamp2 6y agoI can tell you. I first used Logo Writer when I was in 2nd grade (in the 80s) and I thought it was cool. But, the "usefulness" of computers never hit me until the following year when a teacher brought in the Turtle robot and I made my logo writer "program" write to actual paper. Everything fell into place from there. I went to the library and got books to learn BASIC. I went to computer "camps" in the summer at the local university. Etc. I've been a professional programmer now for 15 years. Taking programs from the screen to hardware is what got me really excited.
- askvictor 6y agoAs a computing teacher, for many kids, the difference is huge. Doesn't have to be a robot - the bbc micro:bit is similarly useful in taking computing into the real world. Kids are definitely more motivated by the tangible. 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?
- noodlesUK 6y agoI don’t know that we’ve ever come up with anything better than the Lego mindstorms kits. Lego is an incredible way of teaching people basic physics and engineering concepts, and mindstorms brings programming into the mix. With other programming languages (RobotC and NXJ were used in my learning), it’s a great way of teaching basic programming all the way up to things like sensor fusion.
- rubicon33 6y agoUnpopular opinion: Why does everyone need to learn to code?
- ponker 6y agoCode is everywhere in our world. It governs our behaviors, our desires, our politics. Everyone needs to learn to code for the same reason that everyone needs to learn to cook — code is such a major component of your life that you’d be well served to understand it as well as you can. Just like cooking can help you build good health patterns, coding can help you build good digital lifestyle patterns.
- psychomugs 6y agoIt'll eventually be tantamount to asking why people should learn how to read.
- dgellow 6y agoI think that’s a flawed analogy. Reading and writing are necessary to participate in society (such as read and sign contracts), that’s not the case for writing software.
- askvictor 6y agoI teach coding to high schoolers, and often wonder the same thing. One reason is it helps with problem solving skills - to code, you need to first be able to decompose problems, and structure your thinking. So in that sense, it's a proxy rather than a necessary outcome in itself; kind of like maths (very few people need the level of maths taught in schools), but more modern and sexier. What I've been wondering is, with the likes of Siri and Google Now being able to be 'programmed' with natural language, how much longer we will need to code, compared to talking to a computer/AI to achieve the required outcome.
- kiba 6y agoI think the most important skills/attitude an educator can impart is 'fearlessness', an essential trait when it comes to dealing with the many errors posed by computers and the complexity of the modern world.
- tdeck 6y agoEveryone complaining about how this is impractical clearly hasn't seen a Roomba try to clean a floor.
- arkh 6y agoI'd like to know how it compares with Lego Boost. Same price range and it looks like the same kind of programing and available sensors.
- newshorts 6y agoI owned a turtlebot at one point, love this company and what they are trying to do for education.
- kenni 6y agoIf you’re looking for a cheap platform for learning to code I’d recommend looking into the BBC micro:bit. 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!
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoDamn, that's pretty good.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoThe issue here is really that you can't get the kids excited about software unless it does something in the real world.
- dgellow 6y agoThat’s so untrue. Kids love creating logical gates in Minecraft. Show a kid how to create a small game and they quickly fall in love with software.
- lnsru 6y agoOne cat get lots of wheels, cheap motors, ultrasonic sensors and fake Arduinos for 129$. Though mummy with solder iron doesn’t look look that sexy as in current photo. 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.
- Nexxxeh 6y agoThis is the gateway, not the destination. It's a low-cost piece of kit that removes a potential barrier to entry. 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.
- Nexxxeh 6y agoWhoever decided to call it a "Brick Top" presumably didn't watch Guy Ritchie's masterpiece Snatch. Probably not something you want the kids Googling as understandably, the top results are Alan Ford's character. >Do you know what "nemesis" means?