Sphero Indi robot

Indi. © Sphero.

Sphero, the well-known robotic toy maker, has announced the Indi robot, a toy car that introduces children ages 3 through 5 to the basics of programming. The car’s chassis has a sensor that takes instructions from a colour it’s driving over. Children lay down colourful silicone tiles supplied with Indi to give the car directions: a green tile accelerates the car, pink makes it turn left, purple stops the car and makes it spin, etc. The toy comes with challenge cards to guide children in creating a logical sequence of instructions. The patterns leave tiles open-ended so that children have to figure out which colour gets Indi from point A to point B. In addition, kids can use the Sphero Edu Jr mobile application to customize the behavior of the car using block-based language.

The robot won’t be available until September, but it can already be pre-ordered in one of two sets: the Educational Robot Student Kit, priced at US$ 125, which includes a single robot, 20 coloured silicone tiles, 15 programming challenge cards and a storage case (which acts as a battery charger), or the Education Robot Class Pack for US$ 1,200, designed for schools and which includes 8 robots with accessories, a teacher lesson-plan guide and a transportation and storage case.

⇨ YouTube, “Meet Sphero indi.”

⇨ The Verge, Mitchell Clark, “Sphero’s cute car-shaped robot is driven to teach kids about programming.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman, “Sphero indi Brings Robotics to Pre-Kindergarten.”

2021-05-19