The first time that I saw Ozobot, it was at CES. There was a table with these little things the size of little bugs oozing around on the table. All I could think about was how cute it was. The Ozobot movies through two micro-motors for some serious maneuverability.
As it is, the Ozobot Bit is one of those STEM toys. For those that don’t know, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and there are a lot of toys out there that I reviewed before like the LEGO Mindstorms and Makeblock Mbot.
The Ozobot Bit is one of those toys that you can code, because everyone knows that kids like to code. Okay, I might sound a little sarcastic there, but kids that are raised doing coding are definitely more ready for adulthood programming. In the case of Ozobot, it uses Google’s Blockly to create OzoBlockly which is a very simplified visual programming language similar to others like Scratch, Hopscotch, App Inventor, Tynker, and Tickle Apps.
So, you might think that you have to program this using some kind of cable or Bluetooth to program this. That is not the case, as you can load commands into the robot with flashing lights. You can teach it to follow paths along the table that you can make with magic marker, and it will follow whatever colors that you program it with.
What is interesting is that the Ozobot communicates back with blinking lights as well. It is possible to download free apps as well as build some custom maps, and play some games with people.
Okay, there is really no way that I can describe how much that you can do with this, so if you are interested in it, you can find out more about it here. The Ozobot 2.0 is available for about $59.95 on Amazon.
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