You have no items in your shopping cart.
Product Description
We still haven't named our robot construction kit. The Standard Kit comes with 20 magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, sound, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap simple blocks together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.
Each block in the kit has different equipment on board and a different default behavior. There are Sense Blocks that act like our eyes and ears; they can sense light, temperature, and how far they are away from other objects. Just like with people, the senses are the inputs to the system.
On the flip side, the Action Blocks act as outputs. They do things. Some have little motors inside of them so that they can drive around or spin one of their faces. There are blocks that make noise, shine a flashlight, or display their information through a light-up bar graph.
Which blocks are in the Standard Kit?
Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph
Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature
Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Power, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker
Each block has a tiny computer inside of it and is a robot in it’s own right. So when you put blocks together, you’re actually making a robot out of several smaller robots. Each block communicates with its neighbors, so you know that if two blocks are next to each other, they’re talking. If you make a simple robot by connecting a Light Sensor block to a Speaker block, they’ll start to talk, and when the light in the room gets brighter, the Speaker will get louder. Actually, you’d need a third block to make this work: every robot needs a Power block (with a battery inside) to run. Next, you could swap the Speaker for a Drive block, and when the light gets brighter, the robot will drive faster. A third category of blocks is the Think Blocks: maybe you’d want to put an Inverse block in between the Light Sensor and Drive blocks. Then, the robot would drive slower as the light gets brighter. This simple communication between adjacent blocks is what gives the kit a little bit of magic.
These robotics blocks are designed for people age 5 and older. We will be releasing a small “beta test” run of 50 Standard Kits on April 1, 2010. They’ll be available for pre-order a few weeks before that.
If you would like to be notified as soon as the kit is available, please add your email to the STAY IN THE LOOP box on the right, follow our twitter stream, or become a fan on Facebook. Pick your media!
Each block in the kit has different equipment on board and a different default behavior. There are Sense Blocks that act like our eyes and ears; they can sense light, temperature, and how far they are away from other objects. Just like with people, the senses are the inputs to the system.
On the flip side, the Action Blocks act as outputs. They do things. Some have little motors inside of them so that they can drive around or spin one of their faces. There are blocks that make noise, shine a flashlight, or display their information through a light-up bar graph.
Which blocks are in the Standard Kit?
Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph
Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature
Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Power, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker
Each block has a tiny computer inside of it and is a robot in it’s own right. So when you put blocks together, you’re actually making a robot out of several smaller robots. Each block communicates with its neighbors, so you know that if two blocks are next to each other, they’re talking. If you make a simple robot by connecting a Light Sensor block to a Speaker block, they’ll start to talk, and when the light in the room gets brighter, the Speaker will get louder. Actually, you’d need a third block to make this work: every robot needs a Power block (with a battery inside) to run. Next, you could swap the Speaker for a Drive block, and when the light gets brighter, the robot will drive faster. A third category of blocks is the Think Blocks: maybe you’d want to put an Inverse block in between the Light Sensor and Drive blocks. Then, the robot would drive slower as the light gets brighter. This simple communication between adjacent blocks is what gives the kit a little bit of magic.
These robotics blocks are designed for people age 5 and older. We will be releasing a small “beta test” run of 50 Standard Kits on April 1, 2010. They’ll be available for pre-order a few weeks before that.
If you would like to be notified as soon as the kit is available, please add your email to the STAY IN THE LOOP box on the right, follow our twitter stream, or become a fan on Facebook. Pick your media!
