Super introduction to robotics. Your children will thank you (one day).
Purchased for my 9 year-old, who had it assembled and running in 'not-a-lot' of time with very little assistance from his dad - much to his dad's chagrin I may add!
Yes, it is quite a lot of money but it is pretty much on a par with the other robot kits currently available. For the money you do get a very well designed and made piece of kit. The chassis is powder coated pressed steel, none of your cheap plastic mouldings here, and is certainly capable of taking any punishment inflicted by errant programming leading to falls from table-tops, or crashes with adult feet that happen to get in the way. Should anything be damaged irreparably then it looks like you can obtain any damaged bits separately - one benefit of a modular system - and a customer focussed manufacturer. The manufacturers also supply some spare parts, e.g. drive axles, along with the box of bits. (Incidentally, the box is a work of engineering in itself and is suitable as a permanent home for keeping "mBot" and its accoutrements). It is even possible to acquire a 2.4GHz comms. board to interchange with the Bluetooth comms. module should you desire for more operable range or something.
When looking around for a suitable introductory project I was struck by the possibilities offered by the various expansion kits that are available with mBot and by the interoperability with a certain brand of modelling bricks (as well as those made by Makeblok themselves). This is certainly not intended to be a toy kept in a box, but a foundation for real educational engineering projects that will grow with the student's experience.
Finally, I was particularly impressed by the software programming options. These are *real world* programming languages, not proprietary closed systems. To start off, programmes can be written in Scratch, a very popular and accessible WYSIWYG modular coding system that is used to teach youngsters (and older novices) the concepts and fundamentals of programming structure. However once the programmer has learned all there is to learn with Scratch, then there is the option to programme the robot's control board natively in Arduino C, which is a key to unlocking the lower functions available on the board and also provides a gateway to the heavyweight modern programming languages of the commercial and scientific worlds.
All in all, this little robot is an excellently conceived and designed implementation of an educational kit to teach the basics of what can be achieved through robotics but that provides options for students to progress onto bigger and better things.
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