Meet Sphero indi - That Teaches Programming to Kindergarten

Sphero just announced a new educational robot called indi, a small, non-spherical four-wheeler with a cute face, what appears to be a spoiler of dubious aerodynamic value, and a colour sensor underneath. The infuriatingly non-capitalized indi can be programmed using different coloured tiles that call up different functions that the robot executes. It passes over them, making it super accessible even for preschoolers.

Kids get excited about robots, and there isn't much before this. To teach kids how to create directions to take indi from point A to point B, the toy brings challenge cards that include patterns with missing tiles, so they will have to find out which colour tile will help the car reach its objective.

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The indi can follow the instructions on the tiles without any connection to a phone or computer. Still, if your kids are ready for a little more control, the Sphero Edu Jr app will allow them to use block-based language to customize the car's behaviour.

Once the kids decide they want Indi to do more than it can do with the coloured tiles alone, the Sphero app can connect directly to the robot and do things like reprogramming the functions of each tile, design custom programs using a Scratch-like interface. , control the lights and sounds of the indi, and even manually drive the robot. This same programming interface can be extended to some of Sphero's other robots, offering a transition to more complex coding once children reach third grade. After that, you can move on to the real Sphero spherical robot, as well as the Sphero RVR, when you're ready for something more hackable.

An indi educational kit comes with a robot, 20 silicone coloured tiles, and a few challenges to get started is pre-order for $ 125 and is expected to ship in September.