Details
The cubelets KT01 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, objects, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.
Each cubelet 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.
What is included 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 Blocks:
2 Inverse,
1 Minimum,
1 Maximum,
1 Battery,
2 Passive,
2 Blocker
Accessories:
1 Charger
Each cubelet has a tiny computer inside of it and is a robot in its 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 Brightness Sense block to a Speaker Action 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 Battery block 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 Brightness 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.
Cubelets are designed for people age 4 and older.
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Questions? Find some answers in the Cubelets FAQ.
