As a robot enthusiast, the author has played a lot of robots, among which STEM education robots are rising rapidly because of their comprehensive functions, fun for teaching, suitable for children and young people's early interest cultivation and skill development, and low price. At present, Chinese manufacturers in this field have advantages in technology, market promotion and production, Today, I will bring you an IronBot Chap DIY educational robot. Its developer is RoboSpace, a start-up team from Xiamen. This product has just completed crowdfunding in JD and is now fully launched. Thank you for the products provided by RoboSpace and Qiaoji for trial.

First, let's popularize STEM education. STEM represents science, technology, engineering and mathematics. STEM education is the education of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In the comparison of national strength, the number of STEM degree holders has become an important indicator. It is a basic skill education that has emerged in recent years and is widely recognized and promoted. It is also a basic skill education that the next generation needs.

If you want to do a good job, you must first use your tools. Since STEM education is so important, the importance of IronBot Chap DIY education robot as a tool is highlighted. Like school textbooks, this is a market with a large market and fierce competition. Let's take a look at IronBot Chap DIY education robot.

As a new manufacturer, IronBot's packaging is beautiful, beautiful, solid and stable. Compared with the leading manufacturers in the industry, the details are slightly insufficient. The packaging is mainly used to accommodate and protect. The difference in details is to be bridged with costs. As the number of packaging input costs that will be thrown away after opening the box, each company has its own balance, regardless of the product.

RoboSpace offers a variety of packages to choose from. The IronBot I got belongs to the basic model package. In fact, the IronBot almost contains the main functional components of the complete package, but it can only realize the functions of the vehicle model, which will be described in detail later.

The main parameters of IronBot are as follows. From the deformation degree of the box, it can be seen that the packaging has withstood the impact during transportation very well.

It seems that every educational robot manufacturer has a resounding slogan. RoboSpace's slogan is to build a robot with children.

After opening the box, I first saw the instructions of IronBot, which is not a manual, but a parts list and brochure. The real instructions are in the APP.

IronBot parts are orderly stored in three layers and stored by category.

Foam material is used to protect each layer from damage.

The most important and vulnerable electronic components are stored at the bottom.

The first layer mainly consists of articulated tracks and motors, as well as spare tracks and strong magnets.

The second layer contains all structural parts, which are made of magnesium aluminum alloy. At present, almost all educational and assembly robot manufacturers use magnesium aluminum alloy as structural parts. Its advantages are high strength, light weight, and easy processing. In fact, many aerospace aircraft also use magnesium aluminum alloy as structural skeleton.

The third layer is the main control board, battery, power supply, screw tools and other accessories.

The installation of the IronBot is relatively simple, but there are many screws. Different types of screws are not classified and stored. Fortunately, they are also easy to distinguish because of different lengths. At the same time, two L-shaped wrenches matching the hexagonal socket screws are provided to encourage children to work together with their parents or two children. Nothing can build feelings more than completing one thing together. IronBot also provides five hand screws, five bearings and a thimble for removing tracks. It is quite unexpected to provide bearings in the assembly, which shows that the designer is very attentive to the product.

Compared with the educational robots I have played in the past, The main control board of IronBot is very small, which makes people worry about its functions. However, after some play and understanding, it is found that the main control board of IronBot is very special. Its small size allows it to cooperate with more kits to achieve different functions, so that one main control board can work in different configurations, such as human shape, car shape, PTZ, biped, manipulator, etc, This is also the smart point of IronBot's team, which uses one control module to achieve more functions, so as to achieve dislocation competition with first movers and make full use of the late mover advantage.

The main control box of IronBot can be opened. The main control box is small and simple, but powerful.

IronBot provides a capacitive rechargeable battery, which can clearly see the two cells. It is also sealed and fixed by an openable plastic box, and the plug-in interface is simple and easy to use.

The cell is also very small, and after modular packaging, it is about the same size as the main control board.

The IronBot kit provides two speed motors and an angle motor. The more motors that are the main driving elements, the more functions that can be realized. To know that educational robots can be expanded, IronBot is no exception.

The track is articulated by connecting rod. It is convenient to disassemble and assemble with the provided ejector pin tool, and the length can be freely measured, which means that the ejector pin is not strong enough to deflect when used for the first time.

Since the crawler structure naturally has a drive wheel, the two drive wheels unexpectedly have a bearing structure. However, the interference caused by the contact between the screw and the inner and outer sleeves of the bearing after the screw is tightened by hand for the bearing fit did not achieve the expected effect, and the subsequent product improvement is required.

In addition to the large number of screws, the installation of the IronBot is actually a bit too simple, perhaps just good for children. The reason why it is so simple is that the main functions are modular. Since the whole process is to tighten the screws, the installation process is skipped. The following is the assembled IronBot. You can see that there are many screws.

In fact, there are some remaining parts after assembly, which are not enough to achieve more functions, The components of the IronBot model can almost realize the assembly of other types of robots, but they are always a little bit inferior. This is obviously the intention of RoboSpace. Each functional robot is designed to be sold as a separate kit, a very practical business strategy.

The angle motor used by IronBot to connect the mobile phone is also connected by the bearing. The design team is very careful about the product details. The upper part is connected to the mobile phone by a strong magnet and an iron plate.

From the bottom, we can see the reason why the author said that this robot is too simple. The main functional parts are all modularized, and there is almost nothing to assemble. Perhaps simplicity is a trend. The design of too complex is harmful from a commercial perspective.

After power on, the robot will automatically straighten to the upright state. The luminous element of the main control version is a three primary color LED, and the color can be changed in the programming function.

The strong magnet is very magnetic, and it is very close to the iron sheet, so it is hard to buckle it down. One side of the iron plate is coated with glue, which can stick to the back of the phone. The author uses the method of clamping the iron sheet inside the mobile phone case to avoid the problem that it is too ugly to stick on the mobile phone. Thanks to the magnetism of the magnet, it is still firm after being separated by a layer of plastic.

After the mobile phone is connected through Bluetooth, it can interact with IronBot through the mobile phone as the input port. The robot expression on the screen is also more interesting, which is easy to stimulate children's interest and enthusiasm.

The author is a military fan. Although he has played with many robots, he especially likes this crawler robot. Compared with the wheeled robot, the crawler robot has excellent obstacle crossing ability and is very suitable for making toys.

In the real world, only the very expensive top tank can realize the in-situ turning of the track in reverse operation at the same time, which is much easier in the toy world.

IronBot's APP is very easy to use. The operating instructions and expansion functions are in the APP.

Of course, the core functions of APP are programming, communication and operation.

As mentioned earlier, the IronBot is only a basic model kit. It can be seen that the components of RoboSpace support very rich functions and are still being enriched and expanded. It is very playable. Of course, you must have enough components to achieve this. This is also the IronBot market strategy mentioned above.

APP teaching is very detailed. As long as children can read, they can basically complete the operation independently. It is better for preschool children to be assisted by their parents, which is also a good way to cultivate parent-child relationship.

IronBot currently supports five kinds of expressions. It is very helpful to stimulate children's interest by replacing it with a robot interface that children like. I believe that expressions will continue to expand and enrich.

At present, there are dozens of children's songs available in the APP, and the music is mainly played by the program with the programming function.

The remote control function is a remote control, which can be matched according to the type of selected robot, and can also be set by programming.

In fact, each remote control button corresponds to a programming instruction, which supports modification. Through the IronBot robot, children can understand the corresponding relationship between the program and the robot's actions, so as to stimulate children's interest in programming.

The editing interface of the remote control can show rich and detailed functions.

You can also control the robot by pressing the edit button.

When it comes to programming, people may think it is very high-end and difficult. In fact, APP uses graphical programming, which is simple and easy to use. It focuses on helping children understand the logic relationship of the program, and does not need to master the tedious machine language.

IronBot's programming is very simple. Select the I/O action, connect it with a line, and import it into the robot with one key, so that children can easily get a sense of achievement.

At the same time, IronBot provides many expansion functions, enriching robot functions while making it more vivid. The enhancement of interactivity can improve its playability.

APP provides a variety of voice packages, and you can choose one that children like. Sometimes what attracts children is more sound and pictures.

Of course, the above interactive functions of artificial intelligence simulation are relatively elementary. It is estimated that they are only supported by the built-in content of APP. In contrast, the voice services of various mobile phone manufacturers are mostly based on big data and cloud services. Of course, this requires very strong technology and financial resources, At least a lot of hardware costs of servers and supercomputers are not affordable for an educational robot manufacturer. Therefore, the completion of these expanded functions seems to be low. The actual test results are not very good, and further improvement is needed.

RoboSpace's robot suite is very ingenious in design. With fewer components, it can achieve a lot of functions. It is cost-effective in current educational robots. As a model kit, the author particularly likes its crawler type walking mechanism, which is much more playable than the wheel type. Of course, this car can also be transformed into a wheel type, as long as the crawler is disassembled and installed on the wheel, it is also very pleasant.

After playing with it, I feel that RoboSpace's robot components are very good for STEM education or children's toys. I wish the products sell well.

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