picoh -cute and fun OhBot

The OhBot company has recently released a slightly different version to their OhBot - Picoh (https://www.ohbot.co.uk/picoh.html); a cute small robot head. This is a just a short post about some initial playing with the Picoh OhBot.

Windows
I started playing the windows based blocks (see below) programming used for programming the ohbot. Very scratch-like language but packed with lots of features. The program that loads automatically takes you through loads of the features .

Python
I wanted to know if I can use it with a Mac as well. The blocks are not available for a Mac but a Python-based approach is (https://www.ohbot.co.uk/picoh-for-python.html) . Set-up instructions are good, starting from the GitHub site https://github.com/ohbot/picoh-python, the README file is useful including links to setting up for a Mac and links to example programs. Thonny is my prefered IDE for running Python in this case - just for the ease of use really. Mainly I have played with the example programs so far.

Thoughts 
A cool little robot, nice that it can be used on Windows, Mac, Linux/Pi. In the Picho-Python github site, there are some interesting examples, including one that links, Picoh, Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia - curious about that one.



All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with. Twitter @scottturneruon

Cozmo, Ohbot go to Code Club

I have recently taken two robots to a Code Club, here are a couple of reflections/observations.


Cozmo
This robot produced by Anki is incredibly cute - a cross between Wall-E and a pet in some respects.

The code below was produced by the 'Code-Clubbers' and gets Cozmo to speak move around and operate its forks at the front. Anecdotally, someone was trying to work on something but couldn't resist coming and having another look at what it was doing.

Ohbot

Ohbot provided a different opportunity to play with a robot, getting to move the mouth, speak and track faces. My first impression was some of the children were a bit wary, until they found out they could control what it says and that seemed to break the ice.





All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with. Twitter @scottturneruon

Ramblings about Social Robotics in Schools

Sometimes what I do as job can have some major personal pluses (I get to play with robots some of the time), one of these has been the opportunity to introduce people to social robots, and recently I have been lucky enough to managed to do this four times-  twice to my own computing students, but also to groups of primary school children in two events (see below). 

Apart from it's what I enjoyed doing; the social robots we are starting to see are great, but there is so much more that could be done. Who is going to develop this - possibly one of these children? Why not? It has taken nearly 40 years to get from R2D2 on the screen to some of the social robots we are seeing launched now, in another 40 years we might have something as bright as R2D2 (R2D2 was always brighter than C3PO). Why wouldn't one or more of these bright children or one of the students I teach, be the ones to contribute to this? They have the enthusiasm, with the changes in the National Curriculum in the UK they are developing some of the skills and asking the questions. Look at the work that work being done by Pi Foundation, the CamJam EduKit 3 robot kit (http://camjam.me/?page_id=1035) and especially products such as the OhBot (see bottom of the post for details of this robot) as just as a few examples of how this is being developed.



Event 1.

In an in-reach STEAM activity day I have had the opportunity to show off two NAO robots in action to a group of 8-years olds. As well presenting a short presentation on social robots (see below). By the way Red and Smurf are the nicknames for the two robots.

Meeting our robots at our #science day for girls pic.twitter.com/0XwllXL40s

— Chris Fidler (@Chris_UNPR) March 3, 2016

Meet Smurf and Red at Girls S.T.E.A.M. @UniNorthants @scottturneruon @Changemaker_Hub @nick_petford pic.twitter.com/ZMt07ZrSVh

— STEM at UN (@STEMatUN) March 3, 2016

Buddy will be in homes soon Girls into S.T.E.A.M. @scottturneruon @UniNorthants @Changemaker_Hub pic.twitter.com/1jIsU8IKon

— STEM at UN (@STEMatUN) March 3, 2016

Event 2. 

A talk on Social Robotics (with a little help from a Red friend) to an audience of primary school children as part of Lab_13's Lectures at Wollaston School, Northamptonshire. 

Red performed, walking with three of the children and the presentation included discussion about the robots JIBO and Buddy that are expected this year. 

Red @NaoRobot from @UniNorthants @UoNComputing of to Wollaston School for @Lab_13Irchester lecture @STEMatUN pic.twitter.com/IF4HTVyYa1

— Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) March 18, 2016

Social robots meet red and smurf from Scott Turner

Changes need to the presentation

A change I would like to make is to bring along an OhBot (a bit like the one in the video below) as well as including OhBot in the revised presentation slides.

 



All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

Blog stats - March 2016

The blog has been going less than a year (first post was 15th July 2015) but I thought the statistics about the blog so far might be of interest.

The Top Ten posts based on page views:

mbots - graphical programming and Arduino

22 Jul 2015, 

716

It is a good time to play with little robots

14 Nov 2015, 

401

Raspberry Pi gesture controlled Minecraft X-Wing

3 Jan 2016, 

395

Scratch Robot Arm

23 Jul 2015, 

385

OhBot Experiment

13 Aug 2015, 

323

Experience at Raspberry Pi Cademy 7-8th December 2...

12 Dec 2015, 

318

Raspberry Pi Controlled robot from junk

19 Jul 2015, 

301

Playing with Tickle and Mini-drone

4 Aug 2015, 

300

Raspberry Pi gesture controlled Minecraft X-Wing (...

24 Jan 2016, 

299

Raspberry Pi - Python Junkbot

17 Jan 2016, 

286

So small robots and Raspberry Pi, which I was hoping for as they are my interests as well.



The audience based on pages views is an interesting mix and not really sure what to make of it, apart from I hope they are all finding it useful.

Pageviews by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
United States	8650
Slovakia	1664
United Kingdom	1390
France	394
Germany	305
Ireland	96
Russia	80
Singapore	73
Portugal	72
Sweden	43

Comments and ideas are welcome, i would love to find out what others are doing.



All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.