Description
Blue-bot is a robot for young children. It has the shape of a bee and it is very easy to use, while it fascinates young and old children! It can be used for individual or team work enabling children's active participation in creative and experiential learning. It is an ideal tool for introducing programming, problem solving, following directions, enhancing short-term memory, improving intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and developing cognitive skills, such as observation, sequencing, calculating, space perception, orientation, descriptive language, matching, imagination, creativity, problem solving and many more.
It can be used interdisciplinary for learning numbers, colors, letters, shapes, syllables, number sense, word recognition, equation solving, syllable and sentence composition and other activities.
Blue-bot robot has seven buttons, which are used to program it. It has four navigation arrows (forward, backward, 90° left turn, 90° right turn), start button (GO), memory clearing button (X) and pausing for 1” button (||). The robot can be programmed using the above buttons, which are located on the robot or you can program it using a Bluetooth device. In this case you have three extra commands: 45° left turn, 45° right turn, repeat. The robot blinks its eyes, every time it completes an order and it plays a beeping sound when it completes all given orders.
If you are using a Bluetooth device to program your robot, you first have to install the free Blue-bot app which is available in Google Play (for android smartphones and tablets) and in the App Store (for iOS smartphones and tablets).
* Please make sure that the Blue-bot app is compatible with your smartphone/tablet. You can also program blue-bot by a Windows or Mac computer (with Bluetooth), but you will need to buy additional software.
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Mats for the robot
There are special mats available for the robot to move on and they are sold separately. Students can program their robot according to the teacher’s instruction to follow specific routes on the mats.
For example, the teacher could ask the students to plan a simple program for the robot (ex. make your robot go from A to E) or more difficult ones by using restrictions (ex. make your robot go from A to E but don’t use the FORWARD button, or by passing by C, or using only 3 commands etc.).
Available robot mats:
· Transparent mats (cell layout: 4Χ4 & 4X6)
The transparent mat (4X4) can be placed over your own images. There is also the transparent mat with pockets (4X6) which has special slots where you can place your own images. You can remove the images and insert new ones every time you need to create a new theme.
· Theme mats (cell layout: various)
There are various theme mats such as «Farmyard» - 5Χ5, «Race track» - 4Χ4, «Busy Street» 9Χ3, «Colours, size and shapes» 4Χ4, «English alphabet» - 5Χ6, «Greek alphabet» - 6Χ4, Images - 8Χ6, 6Χ6, «Number Line 0-10» - 1Χ11, «Number Line 0-20» - 1Χ21.
· Talking mat (cell layout: 4X4)
This is placed under any of our 4X4 theme mats and it makes your robot talk! You set four hotspots under the mat, record a message in each one and each time the robot passes by them you’ll hear your recording.
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Blue-bot app
Blue-bot app has two functions, Explore, where you can prepare your own activities and program the robot and Challenge, which has 4 different activity types (Get from A to B, Obstacles, Fewer buttons, Random instructions) where the user has to program the robot to move from one spot to another, go to a specific spot without passing by specific spots or without using a specific button etc. You can also select difficulty level for each activity.
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Instructions for use
Programming the robot using its own buttons
1. Set the Power switch to ON.
2. Set the Sound switch to ON if you want your robot to beep.
3. Decide on the commands you need to give to the robot to press the appropriate navigation buttons one by one. Press the || button if you want the robot to pause at a specific spot for 1 second.
4. Place the robot on the starting position and press GO.
5. The robot will execute all the commands and it will beep to indicate it has finished. After each command its eyes will blink.
6. If you need to give additional commands to the robot, just press the appropriate buttons, if you need to give it new commands, press X and then repeat steps 3-5.
Programming the robot using the blue-bot app
1. Set the Power switch to ON.
2. Turn your device’s Bluetooth function ON.
3. Search for nearby devices on your phone/tablet and select the Blue-bot when it appears in the list.
4. Download and install the blue-bot app to be able to program your robot.
ATTENTION:
The commands you set each time are stored in the robot’s memory until you switch it OFF. If you don’t press the X button before setting new commands, then the robot will execute all the commands (previous and new ones). When the robot’s memory is full (40 commands) you have to clear it first and then set new commands.
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