So my daughter just finished her fist year in First Tech Challenge robotics (6th grade). She seemed to really like it; every time I picked her up she had a smile on her face.
I want to keep the interest going in hopes she will want to continue next year.
I’ve been searching online for DIY programable robots and run across this sort of thing.
Elegoo also has some that are promising.
These might be the best way to get started but seem limiting in what can be done - only to what plans they provide.
I’m wondering if anyone has run across any website that offers plans or instructions for building these kinds of robots that go beyond that which the manufacturers provide
I suggest building one rather than buying a kit (like that dlr that was linked above). If you have time and wherewithal, I’d encourage you to build it with her. I’d give an arm and a leg to have one of my kids interested in robots. Don’t try to do anything with ROS at this time. Learn about mechanics, microprocessors, and “building” things… if it sticks, then just keep building and building. So much more experience is gained by designing and building rather than just assembling. My dad bought me an elgoo robot thing a couple years ago as a birthday gift because I mentioned in one of our talks how I thought I would get back into robots since I had wanted to build one as a kid. It was neat for 5 minutes until I downloaded the firmware to start modifying the code and realized how poorly it was written. I then decided to just build my own… never looked back.
The speech recognition and generation is done through open source software (openvoiceos) that I tailored to work with ROS. It’s intended to be an open source alexa-type platform but was really easy to integrate into my robot. The actual conversation is run using an instance of blenderbotv1 (open sourced from Facebook). Everything is hosted locally, nothing in the cloud. I’m trying to get a better GPU on him to try to run later version of BlenderBot or maybe some other system, but I have to find a GPU that will fit, not draw lots of power, and have lots of memory. Not easy to find one for cheap.
There was a post on here not long ago about an industrial looking robotic arm and its $500 kit that was interesting. Is there a robot arm desk bot with an esp32? That would be cool.
First robotics is awesome. I would love to get my kids involved with something like that. We have a few coding kits that whet the appetite. I have tried generating my own lessons and that was no fun.
The local elementary school librarian has a bunch of lits like these. They often come with heavy price tags, but fleshed out curriculum. I will see if there is a recommendation from them. I have had a few of the cheapo kits and they seem like they work, but the missing piece is going from zero code to something interesting. These projects have big gaps between putting in energy and getting out encouragement. I would pay extra to find one with lessons at least somewhat thought out.
I will also say that getting girls involved is really important. The robotics clubs have really bad ratios (like 30-1) and that just doesn’t make any sense. Coding and robotics is gender neutral and anything you can do to get more girls and women role models involved, the better. I have worked in robotics a long time and the ratios are the same at the professional level, but slowly getting better. As long as your daughter is into it, remove as many barriers as you can.
exactly what I am hoping to do and continue the interest until next robotics season.
This is what I’m finding.
there is a lot of cool stuff, but figuring out where to start is hard. And I have no useful experience in coding. Other parents have asked what they could do in the off season as well and the programming mentor at her robotics team said he would be willing to help out. But I also don’t want to fill his time. He needs a break too after all the volunteer time he puts in - for which I am grateful of all the mentors.
Really appreciating the resources and examples so far.
in addition to what has already been shown, if anyone knows of a good zero to interesting lessons it would be greatly appreciated.
My wife said the library likes dash and finch robots. They are not DIY. They might scratch the itch, but be a bit basic for someone with first robotics experience. They seem cool.
I’m just finishing one of these for my grand kids:
I had one of the two-layer ones that my older grand kids used for a while.
I have put a Bluetooth “Feather” and motor controllers and it can be managed over bluetooth with your phone. My younger grand kids are using the Logo Turtle-style language to drive it.
There are a couple different wheeled robot designs on Adafruit. They also have a series of boards called “Cricket” that can be mounted on various SBC or Arduino-style boards.
