51–60 of 113 posts
- Start with a DonkeyCar with Jetson Nano
- add mecanum wheels (why not three instead of four?)
- add a weapon or laser pointer or whatever
On the other hand, do we really want to push gamification of autonomous weapon systems?
Making the offensive component a central design element is... interesting. They could have designed a robot for kids like what anki did but.. this is what they came up with.
I can imagine, that some primitive gripper is many times more expensive than this offensive component. With a gripper robot must be also bigger and wider as well as more expensive. As I can see in my home country (ex Soviet Union), parents have no problems when little kids play with guns, tanks or planes. Germans, for example, avoid this. I have mixed feelings, I love peace, but the guns also exist in this world.
Making the offensive component a central design element is... interesting. They could have designed a robot for kids like what anki did but.. this is what they came up with.
Really limiting their demographic though. A little thought and they could have have had all the Candy Crush kids too.
Although it is hard, I try to avoid fighting games and media for my kids as much as I can and try to teach them competing in more creative ways...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why should we persist the idea that wanting to win is a boy thing Because it most often is, boys typically like to compete more than girls do. I'm not going to quote studies on this, just basing this on my experience growing up and now as an adult being around small kids.
This speaks to society’s role in conditioning men to be aggressive and women to be passive, which was exactly what I said I was concerned with. Unless you’re making the case that absent cultural conditioning, women are biologically less interested in “winning” than men?
The average man is biologically different than the average female. Testosterone alone can explain why men are generally more violent and sexually aggressive than women. And there are many many many other factors in effect. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/
Why do people get angry about facts, there is no value judgment in saying "The average women is inclined to do X while the average man is more inclined to do Y", it doesn't mean "every woman HAS to do X and every man HAS to do Y". Why would every animals of different sex present different behaviours but somehow humans are all 100% equal and every difference is due to "society" ? Is biology a social construct now ?
imo giving way to kids impulses like fighting might be commercially the most viable thing - educationally it is not. It is always much easier to be destructive than constructive. However, we should try to teach our kids the latter. Achieving win-win does not usually come from impulse but from empathy. Although it is hard, I try to avoid fighting games and media for my kids as much as I can and try to teach them compe…
Do you also forbid water blasters in the hot summer?
As you say, those playful fights are a natural impulse. It is also not true that you can solve every problem without violence.
I'm expecting people to chime up with "what about the girls?", though. Presumably those battle bots might be considered off putting to girls, putting them to a severe disadvantage because they miss out on their STEM education. (An argument I would also consider bullshit, but those are the times).
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> The fact that DJI releases a [toy] for kids that has a working cannon feels super icky from my western perspective. I don't think that's a western perspective, I think that's your perspective. The actual western perspective likes robots, toys, toy weapons, robotic toys, and robotic toy weapons, and all the various combinations thereof. Nerf and Transformers have been cultural staples for decades. This isn't even th…
yes, there are many commercial toy robots with guns. And there are many gun toys and violent videogames etc etc. But they are not educational. Educational + has a cannon. There is some cognitive dissonance right there. My opinion.
To each their own, I suppose...
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IMHO this comment qualifies as one of those "bizarre anti-Chinese sentiment" ones. The #2 consumer drone maker in the world after DJI, Parrot from France, also sells an educational drone for kids with a cannon (it's an add-on but gets sold together in a popular set), and has done so for years: The Parrot Mambo. There's countless other toys for children that include weaponry and/or glamorize it for that matter, like j…
Zero anti-chinese sentiment from my part. I was wondering if the culture there makes it more acceptable. I understand it is a poor question to ask, as it immediately sets the tone that China is doing something wrong. Perhaps I should have worded it better. Bare with me for a second though. I grew up watching western spaghetti films, playing with bb guns and thinking of cowboys as heroes. I was born and raised in Euro…