Where the Lego Robot costs around $250, Scribbler is close to $75 and comes preassembled with: three light sensors; a pair of infrared line sensors that could read bar code or follow lines; a contact-bumper sensor; 2 independent motors for the two wheels with stall sensors to protect the motor; 3 programmable LED lights; a speaker which plays a wide range of sounds and notes; a Pen Port for drawing as it drives,; and a port of a serial cable computer interface. effective enough for running obstacles courses. About the size of a frisbee, it is fairly light, about the weight of a pint of milk.
It's programming interface looks similar in style to Lego's programming editor. For more, see http://www.scribblerrobot.com The related curriculum effort is supported by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) is a joint venture of Bryn Mawr, Georgia Tech and Microsoft Research whose goal is to increase student enrollment — particularly of women and underrepresented minorities — in computer science. Microsoft is investing over $1 million to get curriculum developed and into classrooms more quickly.
Combining Lego Robotics activities with the much more affordable Scribbler may be just the thing to enable entire classes to be working in pairs or each with their own robot. A next step for IPRE will be the development of a less expensive robot that has even more features including a camera. They have also created documentation for how to add Bluetooth communication to Scribbler for further levels of interaction.
Leave a comment if you come across some robust curriculum that builds across STEM competencies and goes beyond the Scribbler Startup Guide.
1 comment:
This looks interesting. I can see it being easily used int he classroom.
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