However, it is not easy for robot education to be "fun" and "studious" at the same time. In fact, there are so many products known as educational robots at present, but Wonder Workshop, a star startup company from Silicon Valley, broke through in a short time: it was not only rated as "toy of the year"; And Melinda Gates, the wife of Bill Gates; Apple, which was also picky, was invited to settle in the Apple Store. Until now, it is still the highest-rated educational robot on Amazon.
In fact, as a serial entrepreneur, Vikas Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Wonder Workshop, had previously founded a virtual currency company called Jambool, which was acquired by Google at a high price. Now, as a father, he wants to make the best products for his children. "What we have to do is to let children explore how to learn programming while playing with robots, and help young children open the door to computer science in an easy-to-understand and interesting way."
Exquisite software and unique content.
At present, in the United States, which attaches importance to science education, there are a large number of educational robot human products, and it is not without reason that the two star robot products Dash and Dot of Miracle Workshop can get such high evaluation. In Vikas Gupta's view, the advantages of Dash and Dot compared with competitors are very obvious.
The first is its exquisite software design and unique teaching content.
Both Dash and Dot have their own "personalities", and MengMeng's appearance and anthropomorphic design will be of great interest to children. It's like an advanced robot pet. It can communicate and interact with children through simple operations. There are also many possibilities. Through its five different applications, children can program the robot to complete many complicated actions, such as stopping and turning when they see a wall, or turning in a noisy direction, and so on. "As long as children have unlimited imagination, playfulness is unlimited." Vicars Gupta said.
Dash and Dot are not only equipped with different sensors, but the core part is the unique software and content that match them. There are five applications of Dash and Dot. With different programming skills, they can meet the learning needs of different levels and control the learning gradient.
For example, Wonder is a brand-new programming interface designed by Wonder Workshop team, which provides various robot control methods and sensor data. Children can command robots to do different actions through the graphical programming interface, so that they can learn how robots think and make decisions.
"Robots have different forms, but the instruction logic behind them is universal. We designed Wonder to help children learn these universal robot instructions. " Vicars Gupta said.
If children are more interested in learning traditional programming languages, they can use another application called Blockly, which uses Google's programming language and is more systematic, allowing children to get in touch with programming concepts and basic skills more deeply.
In addition, an application called Path allows children to plan the robot's route. "We don't just connect robots with an application. We have a complete ecosystem, including applications with different functions and extensible devices. For example, in addition to basic gameplay, we can also play xylophone and pinball." Vicars Gupta said.
"Our programming interface is very open. You can keep trying and use your imagination to build your own robot, solve problems and explore infinite possibilities. For example, I have been programming for more than 20 years, but I can still have fun with Wonder. Children who have never learned programming can also have fun. "
Fun first, right out of the box.
Secondly, it has a clear positioning: it is completely made for children under 12 years old, and this concept runs through every design detail.
According to Vikas Gupta, children under 12 are actually "neglected groups". It's time for children of this age to develop hobbies. "If children can appreciate the fun of technology at this age, they will be more easily attracted by technology, and they will be able to learn relevant knowledge more independently in the future, which will not only cultivate hobbies, but also be more entertaining." So unlike many complex robots aimed at teenagers on the market, Dash and Dot are very easy to use. It eliminates complicated assembly steps, but allows the robot to use it directly out of the box.
"For children under 12 years old, assembly is very difficult and boring, and children easily lose patience. Therefore, the robot must be interesting as soon as it is opened and attract their attention immediately. " Vicars Gupta said.
This is also reflected in the design of the application. They specially developed an application that allows children to interact with robots through remote control, so as to lower the threshold of interaction, and at the same time improve the difficulty step by step through gamification "advanced" design.
"At the beginning of this project, we did a lot of research to see what age children are more suitable to start learning robotics and programming." Vikas Gupta said, "Many MIT studies show that children can actually absorb relevant knowledge when they are five or six years old. The question is whether we can provide them with effective tools. What we have to do is to make Dash and Dot the basic learning tools for children. "
In addition, reasonable ladder pricing has also become a major advantage of Dash and Dot robots. Unlike the expensive prices of many robots nowadays, Vikas Gupta hopes that every child can be exposed to Dash and Dot. Therefore, they introduced a combination of dashes and dots. Dot costs $49.99 and Dash costs 149.99, which is convenient for children from different families to contact.
"Dash is a real robot. Open the package and charge it and you can play. It can act according to voice commands, sing and dance. It's the kind of robot that children always want to have. Dot is the robot's brain, which contains several games, such as magic games and music games. It can even become a lightsaber in the movie Star Wars and make a similar buzz. No matter what kind of family you come from, we hope that every child will have the opportunity to bring Dash and Dot home. "
Go into primary schools and help schools use robots to teach.
In the United States, not only more and more parents attach importance to robot education, but also primary schools begin to regard it as a formal curriculum. But the robot itself involves electronics, circuits, programming, machinery and other disciplines, and teachers are also discouraged. One is that there are too few teachers with professional background in the school, and the other is that they don't know how to teach.
To this end, Wonder Workshop also launched the Wonder course plan to help schools use Dash and Dot robots for robot education. It is specially designed for school classrooms, and will provide teachers with detailed course guidance, so that teachers can understand how to interact with students, and cooperate with Dash and Dot to teach children related knowledge of mathematics, natural science, engineering and programming. The course has clear themes and knowledge points, and teachers can easily carry out a complete course in 20 minutes.
This course plan is very popular. According to Vikas Gupta, 65,438+0,500 schools in the United States are using their Wonder curriculum plans, and the feedback is excellent. Not only that, Wonder Workshop also held a robot contest in the United States, and assigned six tasks to the children who participated in the competition, so that they had to control Dash through many obstacles to find Dot through application programming.
"This is a very complicated task, but to my surprise, children have such great potential. Many people actually finished all the tasks in one month. They have never learned programming before, but they are learning while groping in the competition! " Vicars Gupta said. The children's enthusiasm also gave them great encouragement. Many children spend 20-30 hours a week to finish the game.
"This is the first similar competition. We attracted more than 1000 children from more than 600 schools, and the children were very happy. We plan to promote it all over the world this year. We hope to see children, parents and teachers all over the world begin to pay attention to robot education. " Vicars Gupta said.
China is the next stop for him and his team. They hope to bring Dash and Dot to the market in China, so that children in China can have a chance to play and study with children from other parts of the world.
These efforts have paid off.
Dash and Dot were named "Toys of the Year" and were also highly praised by Bill Gates' wife Melinda Gates. In fact, the background of Wonder Workshop team is also quite eye-catching. The three co-founders not only graduated from famous universities such as Stanford, but also have many years of industry experience. Among them, CEO Vikas Gupta is a serial entrepreneur. He previously founded a virtual currency company in Jambool, which was acquired by Google at a high price. CTO Saurabh Gupta previously worked in Apple for 6 years and was responsible for the iPod software team; Micale Greaves, another co-founder, was in charge of the design and manufacture of consumer electronics and toys in Frog Design, a famous design consulting company.
"Dashes and dots are educational tools. We still focus on how to help children learn, but it's also fun. Many toys were left behind after a week, but our data show that at least half of the children continue to use Dash and Dot after half a year. This is their charm. " Vicars Gupta said. (This article is the first titanium media)