Kevin King wanted to create an easy robot to teach kids how to write code. His previous Kickstarter project Ringo the Programmable Robot was designed to teach and code but he felt that a cheaper no frills version for education could reach more students. King is currently running a successful Kickstarter campaign for Wink, a low cost Arduino STEM education pet robot.
The greatest ambition that Wink has is to transition kids from graphical programming interface into actual coding languages. Scratch is the graphic exampled used in the campaign video but many students are familiar with Lego Mindstorm programming thanks to FIRST Lego League. A full curriculum is already built around the programming tasks that Wink is designed to perform, and the curriculum is available with the basic robotics kits.
Wink can do line following, light seeking, barrier detection, autonomous exploring and also encourages students to build their own programs. Three different skill levels incorporating twenty one lessons currently exist, from the first lesson that teaches to make the robot wink up to Boolean operators and expressions in Level 3.
The board is based on an UNO board using an Atmel ATMega328p processor and includes three light sensors, an infrared barrier sensor and four line / edge sensors. An onboard 240 milliAmp hour battery will power the robot for hours and can be recharged through USB.
Wink is a great initiative to give more students the ability to learn coding and programming languages. It’s impressive to me that Kevin King and his team are launching a second Kickstarter campaign so soon after Ringo’s March 2015 debut. The dedication to learning is awesome - the sample lesson plan that teaches the robot to wink is online here. The commitment to building a cheaper, simpler, more accessible robotics platform to reach more students is also a huge positive.