Robots and Physical Computing

The Sphero Mini has been recently launched and at the time of writing seems to be popular, Amazon.co.uk delivery times vary depending on the colour you select. There are some very good reasons for it to be popular. It's a ping-pong sized ball, much smaller than the normal Sphero's and approximately half the price. Though slightly less featured, what it has got, is good.  In the box, you get the sphero-mini, a charging cable, as well as packet of mini-skittles and cones. There is no charging station for this one, you charge it taking the outer shell off (it splits into two pieces) and the socket is on the ball inside. Actually, it is quite interesting to see the insides (I know the Spheros SPRK+ have a transparent shell to show the innards) and handle the ball inside, trying to see what it does. The ball is a little slower than the other Spheros, but this is not a problem in my opinion. There is an app for playing the games, and this is fun to play with; ...

I have had these for a while, a couple of Ozobots. Small little robots that react to colours on the ground. Below are figures showing the Ozobots working with an App Ozogroove which allows the bots to perform dance routines, and out of the box, they are set up to run around a track that has coloured blocks causing the bots to change what they do. figure 1.  Interesting thing about these is the way a routine is transferred from the App to the bot. - by flashing light. In figure 1 the two ozobots are mid way through being programmed with a dance routine. Figure 2 shows one of the bots during the dance. figure 2 The latest version these, Ozobot Bit 2.0 can be programmed via Blockly-based website with light being used to transfer the routine. I had a play with one a couple of days ago, liked it so much I order a pair from Amazon! As an aside, when I first saw the light transfer method it reminded me of some of the early British TV programmes on Computing in the 1980s, ...

In a recent post controlling the Sphero BB-8 with the Tickle App was discussed. This is not the only alternative software, the Tynker App can also control it. This is also a graphical drag and drop programming tool, that you can connect certain 'toys' to. Though the App itself is about developing programming skills. The Sphero BB-8 Droid can be connected to Tynker (or how I did it anyway) by: Clicking on the Create button on the opening screen; Clicking on Blank Template; Deleting the 'Actor' that has there and clicking on the + button in the top right hand corner of the screen; Clicking on connected toys and selecting the grey ball; On the main screen it should say spherobot with a code button at the side, click on the button; You should get a screen with some code for changing the colour shown and then moving in a square- you can change this for your own code. Not all the commands, listed down the side, will work with the BB-8 - I re...

Wonder Workshop ( https://www.makewonder.com/ ) produce the  robots Dash and Dot robots (see picture above). It is hard not to be charmed by these robots, they are cute, easy to use, download the Apps and you are ready to go almost out of the box - and add to this an easy to use but fairly powerful tool for developing programming. At the time of writing the software is only available for IOS but there are plans for Android.  Blockly, available as one of apps, can be used to program the robots. It is a simple looking graphical language (simpler looking but similar to Scratch). A simple example (shown opposite) where Dash (the bigger of the two) does things such as  moves forward,  going left, lights change to orange, , left ear changes colour, head moves forward and it roars like a dinosaur. It relatively easy to then add loops and test (such as checking if it's 'friend' Dot is in view). Below is a very short video of Dash moving around until it 'sees' Dot. ...