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Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

kickstarter.com

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Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#11

Post by cheez »

sloanesturz wrote: post #8

Their very first argument is "But we also know that kids love playing games, interacting with real objects, and making things." Childhood should be about goofing off on tricycles, playing tag, and creating awesome Lego towers from a big box of blocks. I love programming now, but if I had started coding as young as the children in the video, I don't know if I'd be as jazzed about it as an adult. Maybe the kids who pla…

Chances are that kids learn how to be social from their parents. My kids read (past and present tense) fantasy stories, program NXT, play lots of sports, explore the backyard alone or with each other and are unfortunately fairly independent, just like me.

I do my best to raise them to be social and to make close friendships. They are quite the social butterflies but as their main influence, they copy a lot of my habits. As I had been on my own since my late teens, this meant that I've learned not to depend on others and surprise, they copied me.

Maybe these personality traits are correlated with programming robots but I don't think programming robots causes it. It's more what they are taught at home.

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#12

Post by deelowe »

sloanesturz wrote: post #8

Their very first argument is "But we also know that kids love playing games, interacting with real objects, and making things." Childhood should be about goofing off on tricycles, playing tag, and creating awesome Lego towers from a big box of blocks. I love programming now, but if I had started coding as young as the children in the video, I don't know if I'd be as jazzed about it as an adult. Maybe the kids who pla…

So... Are you arguing that children shouldn't be allowed to program?

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#13

Post by salter »

adaml_623 wrote: post #10

It looks great but their is a lack of an About Us section on the website. I'm worried about the website not being maintained and the Robotiky becoming an expensive paperweight.

I can assure you that it will be maintained. John and I are committed to this project and have been working on it full time, and will continue to do so.

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#15

Post by salter »

yaddayadda wrote: post #5

Lost interest when I saw rewards that include "logins" and "licenses" combined with no mention of plans to open source. I don't mind (and on occasion actually enjoy) paying to help develop or maintain software, ditto to help develop, maintain, or manufacture hardware. But something like this should be fully hackable, and these days I won't pay for anything less.

It is based on the arm mbed system.

http://mbed.org/blog/entry/Robotiky-Robot-Kickstarter/

So it is fully hackable running anything you write on that.

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#16

Post by salter »

SeanLuke wrote: post #2

Those bump sensors would be snapped off in ten minutes in my household. How hard would it have been for them to slap a Sharp Infrared sensor or two on there? http://www.sharpsme.com/optoelectronics/sensors/distance-mea... Having come back from Botball, I have to say that overall this robot doesn't feel fully baked.

Swapping out the bump sensors for IR is something that we really want to do, we just have to finalise the manufacturing details.

The robot shown is just a prototype, the shipped product will have at least the functionality we have stated - and probably a lot more.

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#17

Post by yaddayadda »

salter wrote: post #15
yaddayadda wrote: post #5

Lost interest when I saw rewards that include "logins" and "licenses" combined with no mention of plans to open source. I don't mind (and on occasion actually enjoy) paying to help develop or maintain software, ditto to help develop, maintain, or manufacture hardware. But something like this should be fully hackable, and these days I won't pay for anything less.

It is based on the arm mbed system. http://mbed.org/blog/entry/Robotiky-Robot-Kickstarter/ So it is fully hackable running anything you write on that.

From your link, emphasis mine, "The team prototyped the idea using an mbed-enabled NXP LPC1768 prototyping board, and then transitioned to a full custom design using the mbed HDK for NXP LPC11U24 board based on an ARM Cortex-M0+."

So the hardware may support hacking, but their software isn't designed to be hacked (e.g., requiring licenses).

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#18

Post by salter »

yaddayadda wrote: post #17
salter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is based on the arm mbed system. http://mbed.org/blog/entry/Robotiky-Robot-Kickstarter/ So it is fully hackable running anything you write on that.

From your link, emphasis mine, "The team prototyped the idea using an mbed-enabled NXP LPC1768 prototyping board, and then transitioned to a full custom design using the mbed HDK for NXP LPC11U24 board based on an ARM Cortex-M0+." So the hardware may support hacking, but their software isn't designed to be hacked (e.g., requiring licenses).

I think it is important that the hardware is based on a big opensource platform – it means you are never going to have an expensive paperweight. With the software it is transitioning to use standard programming languages – so you get the full hackability of those later on. If there was sufficient demand from users then the software could be open sourced – definitely intend for people to be able to create their own programs and share them.

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#19

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

salter wrote: post #14
eloisant wrote: post #3

So it's pretty much a physical Logo? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

We drew some inspiration from Logo, but Robotiky progresses to a much higher level than Logo.

There is quite a bit more to Logo than turtle graphics. It is a complete programming language; essentially a dynamically scoped m-expression Lisp with support for fairly sophisticated functional programming[1]. In what way is your system "much higher level"?

[1] http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1ch0/preface.html

Re: Robotiky: Make coding into child's play

#20

Post by salter »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #19
salter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We drew some inspiration from Logo, but Robotiky progresses to a much higher level than Logo.

There is quite a bit more to Logo than turtle graphics. It is a complete programming language; essentially a dynamically scoped m-expression Lisp with support for fairly sophisticated functional programming[1]. In what way is your system "much higher level"? [1] http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1ch0/preface.html

Sorry - I had logo, and the turtle robot's that run it, mixed up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)

I was comparing the turtle robot I used when I was younger to the Robotiky robot (I appreciate that it is also possible to build a very sophisticated turtle robot).

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