Lil’Bot is an Arduino Uno compatible balancing robot designed as a low-cost teaching vehicle and experimentation platform. Just like an Arduino board, it takes various shields for added functionality. Especially designed for Lil’Bot, the emoShield allows the robot to make various emoticon-like expressions.
For younger children, Lil’Blocks is a graphic programming language based on Blockly (designed by Neil Fraser at Google) and adapted to Arduino by Fred Lin. Blockly is the language of choice for the Hour of Code, an ambitious program to teach children programming in an hour or less. Faithful to that philosophy, Lil’Blocks lets children program a complex balancing robot using tasks as easy as assembling Lego bricks.
A Kickstarter campaign to fund the project is off to a vigorous start, reaching 63% of its funding goal within the first four days. Lil’Bot was conceived at the Mountain View, CA Hacker Dojo.