Robo Wunderkind Uses LEGO Concept To Teach Kids to Code, Build Robots

Another company has come up with the idea to use LEGOs as a design model for teaching small children the basics of coding with a new robotics kit aimed at making robotics fun and easy.

The kit--called Robo Wunderkind-features colorful, LEGO-compatible colorful bricks that connect similarly to the long-time popular children's building kit to develop their own robots. Kids can then program the robots to do a variety of things, such as solve mazes, go on treasure hunts, play music and navigate around obstacles.

Robo Technologies-a company formed two years ago in Vienna, Austria, by a team of engineers and designers-is behind the project. The company also has a headquarters in San Francisco.

Founder Rustem Akishbekov came up with the idea for Robo Wunderkind while building robots on the Arduino platform, a task he thought was too technical to introduce newcomers to coding robots, according to the company. This inspired him to making coding and building robots easier for kids.

Akishbekov, however, isn't the first to come up with a LEGO-like building kit for building robots. Modular Robotics already offers Cubelets, cube-shaped blocks that can be snapped together to form mini-robots that move in different ways autonomously, and TinkerBots is another kit inspired by LEGOs that gives kids snap-together components for robot design.

Robo Technologies is currently in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign that runs until Oct. 29 to raise funds for buying the tooling needed to produce the kits. The project already has surpassed its goal of raising $70,000, having raised more than $160,000 at the time this article was written for the project.

The key to the technology is that all of the sensors, motors, batteries, circuits and other electronic components are embedded in the building cubes, which then snap together like LEGOs, according to information on the Kickstarter campaign page. Each cube has its own function, with each kit containing a battery cube, a microcontroller cube, cubes with motors, a cube containing a Bluetooth module, and cubes with sensors. Data and energy transmissions for the robots work wirelessly.

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The hardware comes along with an application that features a visual programming interface kids can use to code their robots, giving them an easy first introduction to the basics of robotics programming, according to Robo Technologies.

Robo Wunderkind comes in three sets, with current Kickstarter prices starting at $149. The most basic set features cubes for building the robots while the most advanced includes a digital camera and a weather sensor, allowing children to develop robots that have more sophisticated skills. Robo Technologies hopes to begin shipping the kits next summer.

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Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer who has written about technology and culture for more than 15 years. She has lived and worked as a professional journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco and New York City. In her free time she enjoys surfing, traveling, music, yoga and cooking. She currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal.