The team at Dexter Industries wants to produce robot kits that are easy to use, and inspire people from any background to learn about coding and technology. They started in 2013 with a Kickstarter campaign for BrickPi, a robotics platform that combined Lego Mindstorms and Raspberry Pi platforms to create robots.
Last year the team ran a campaign for GoPiGo, a robotics system built around Raspberry Pi and still intended to be used by any skill level. Dexter is currently crowdfunding GoBox, a robotics kit built around GoPiGo that delivers new missions every month. The missions each come with a different sensor to develop different robotics and programming skills while tying the lessons to real world applications.
Programming can be done in Python, Scratch, Node.js and Go but the platform is open source and advanced programmers can use their language of choice. The basic kit comes with an improved version of the base robot, now called the GoPiGo2, and assembly instructions.
A line follower sensor and circuitboard, a five megapixel camera, servo kit, light sensor, sound sensor, ultrasonic sensor, buzzer, motion sensor, infrared sensor, push button and LEDs are the different add on equipment that comes in the monthly boxes.
The sample lesson in the campaign video and available as a draft on the campaign page uses a light sensor to illustrate biomimicry. Students start with a basic idea of their project - figuring out an animal they can model that performs an action when transitioning from dark to light. A full design process of Problem - Design - Build - Code - Test - Iterate is shown to teach product design and basic problem solving.
GoBox is an awesome example of a team that was already creating a great product but questioned their mission and whether the product was fully meeting their goals. The engineers, programmers, designers and businesspeople are Dexter all worked to develop the GoBox to meet the goal of easier entry into coding and robotics. This is a great addition to the already busy field of inspirational and educational programming / building platforms.