2016 Holiday Guide for Robot Toys

Holiday is just around the corner and it’s time to order gifts from “Santa”. This year, I decided to give my son something different, something other than candies, chocolates, pokemon cards, lego, etc.

Since he has been exposed to basic programming concepts through code.org and Scratch. So…, how about a programmable Robot for this Christmas? Sounds good.

After doing some research and comparison, we ordered Ozobot Evo. To get started out of box, it supports a color-code based language for various actions, e.g. follow the black line and move forward, stop at the red color, rotating at the blue color and play color light and music, etc. You can also customize the action with a mobile app on the phone or tablet with an environment similar to Scratch.

When he grows up a bit more, we might introduce marty the robot to him. It looks and works more like the robots we know about. It also teaches some real mechanical dynamics for the kids.

Here are some notes I took during the research, hope it will be useful to you.

only supports the colored line language

both 1.0 and 2.0 available on amazon (around $60)

More advanced than Bit, supports the colored line language and a Scratch like visual programming language, can control the robot using a mobile app, supports social interactions with friends’ robots.

available on amazon (around $100):

A playful companion, a robot that has personality, very cute!

available on amazon (around $300):

This is for more grown-up kids, more makebot-like robot, fully programable, start with Scratch, then move to Python. The way they dance together looks so funny ;-)

not available yet, currently on crowdsourcing

kids education robot and companion, not that programmable.

Founder from Shenzhen, China (around $230)

size of a toddler, family robot, assistant, voice control, helper, etc. Reminds me of Baymax in Big Hero 6 ;-)

available for pre-order (around $600): will ship in early 2017

Originally published at http://mwebhack.blogspot.com.