Push Button Programming Robot: A Beginner-Friendly Tool to Develop Coding, Robotics, Problem-Solving, and Critical Thinking Skills for Students in...

Took a while to put together, but the instructions were just through enough to figure out the building steps. Some of the steps took a bit to figure out but not impossible. The end product robot was alright, but not the most interesting out there. Overall a decent robot build.

I am always on the lookout for educational toys that will keep my 11 year old engaged while also helping him develop learning skills. This Programming Robot is a fantastic addition to his collection. My child was excited to start experimenting with the programming buttons. What he loves most about this robot is how easy it is to use. My child was able to start programming right away without any assistance as it doesn't require any soldering, which gave him a sense of independence and confidence. The LED indicator light is a helpful feature, as it lets my child know when he have successfully programmed a command. I also appreciate that this toy is designed for STEM education. I'm glad that my child is getting a head start on these important skills. Overall, I highly recommend this Programming Robot to any parents or educators who are looking for an engaging, user-friendly, and educational toy for children.

We didn't get any instructions with our kit. My 13 year old worked on it for about an hour to see if he could figure it out with no luck.

This kit reminds me of a physical incarnation of some of the "hour of code" projects on code.org that I've seen my kids do. You can program the robot with a sequence of forward, left and right commands to maneuver it around a physical landscape. While the kit is somewhat clever, I feel like it's limited in it's utility. My 11 year old quickly lost interest after a couple of programs. I think that one of the biggest shortfalls of this kit is that it does not include any obstacles to "solve" by programming the robot. Without a maze or course to go through, the programming seems kind of random. Maybe a printed poster with a path to try and follow would be more useful. The other difficulty that I had was that the robot was not super predictable. The left motor was slightly more powerful than the right which meant that it had trouble tracking straight. Turning at half second intervals was also not super predictable, and difficult to repeatedly get the same angle turn. While it wasn't rocket science to put it together, the instructions were a poorly photocopied black and white sheet of paper. It was difficult to see the pictures clearly. The biggest part that I struggled with was mounting the battery box. It seemed like there should have been a notch for the wires to cleanly come out the sides without getting smushed. Instead I eventually routed them underneath the battery box which felt a little odd. While I appreciate the cleverness of a push button programming interface, it seems hard to imagine teaching programming without going beyond manually repeated single step procedures. I would prefer a toy that incorporates looping, conditionals and maybe sensors for events. Maybe these could be add-ons? Or maybe the kit could include a USB port for transferring scratch programs? This isn't a bad kit, but I think that it could do more.

Do yourself a favor; if you buy this, save the color picture of the instructions off somewhere to make sure you have a copy. As delivered, the black and white copy of the instructions was nearly unreadable. It took a fair amount of deductive reasoning and examination of the parts bin and perusal of the images from adjacent steps to figure out what was supposed to happen in some of the steps. The images were almost useless. If you refer to the color images in the ad, you'll be far better off. One of the first things you'll notice is no batteries are included. Not a big deal. A slight deal is that the ad refers to "AAA" batteries, but the manual refers to "AA" batteries. It's "AA" that you'll want. The next thing you'll notice is that the very first thing you install, that battery carrier, has two leads coming off the carrier in a badly engineered location, with no clearance for the wires in the place it will be screwed in tight in the frame. Then you'll notice they didn't include a small Phillips tool, either. Then you'll begin the process of trying to make out details in very poor black and white photos, eventually coming up with a complete robot in under 10 minutes. During that 10 minutes, you'll learn nothing about circuit theory, electronics, microcontrollers, motors, electromagnetism, conduction, voltage, electromotive force, NOTHING. Instead, you'll learn: these 6 screws go here, this pushed in there, push these 4 buttons according to the following script. That's it. Honestly, this kit is STEM in the way assembling an IKEA end table is STEM. It's not. When you're done, if you have the forethought to have batteries and screwdrivers around, you've got a simple machine capable of executing turtle geometry - so many degrees of left, so many degrees of right, and forward. That's it. Ignoring the complete lack of STEM on the way to the finished product, the finished product isn't terribly interesting. If you're looking for a STEM gift in this price range, an Arduino kit makes a whole lot more sense.