PROGRAMMING KIDS’ PLAY TIME
The hottest AI-inspired toy robots teach important concepts, writes Denise Deveau.
Cozmo has a lot of things figured out. He’s a whiz at playing matching games, and has a lot to say. Like any friend, he can be a sore loser or will do an in-your-face victory dance when he wins.
He can express joy, sadness and anger, and even sneezes when something tickles his senses. When things go wrong, he’ll throw a tantrum — and when asked, he might do a few weightlifting moves. He snores when he naps.
Cozmo is the latest AI-inspired toy robot that has been a huge hit in the U.S. and is now making its way to the Canadian market through BestBuy ($249.99). It’s made by Anki, a company started by three PhD robotics and AI students from Carnegie Mellon.
It took years for Cozmo to turn into the charming pint-sized interactive plaything he is today. The first iteration dates back to 2011, says Patrick De Neale, vicepresident of business development and corporate strategy. “A certain amount of AI had to be built into Cozmo to take it to a functional state.”
It goes without saying that kids love cool robots, especially with such endearing fictional characters as R2-D2 and Wall-E, he adds.
“Our challenge was making one that could see and recognize a person, understand events, and move and react in a way that made sense. Then you have to build a personality on top of that.”
De Neale says a toy robot was the perfect choice for testing out the team’s robotics and AI concepts. “The relative risk is low. If you were developing a medical robot, a 99 per cent success rate would be unacceptable. For toys that’s okay.”
Bringing AI to the toy realm isn’t just about child’s play. The U.S. Toy Industry, which named drones, robots and toys-to-life (i.e. a mashup of technology and traditional toys) as one of the five top toy trends of 2016, has stated that “hottest robots of the year will be customizable and teach kids important concepts, including coding, engineering, problem-solving and puzzle building.”
There’s a lot kids can learn from working with them, confirms Jennifer Turliuk, CEO of MakerKids, which runs afterschool programs in robotics and coding. “Robots are great for kids to learn that they can be creators and not just consumers of these sorts of technologies. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the founders of Google all credited their childhood experiences with robotics and electronics as part of their success.”
There are plenty of ways kids can participate, from creating chatbots to programming night lights, she says. “Kids make their own decisions on how they want them to interact.” In her travels, Turliuk has seen plenty of robotics games and toys for kids being tested, such as Dash and Dot, mBot, Arduino, Caterpillar robot and Canada’s own Little Robot Friends.
Mark Argo, co-founder and CEO of Little Robot Friends, says creating cute little robots that sit in your pocket and can be programmed to do different things had been a hobby of his for some years. When he launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to gauge interest, they raised $125,000, enough to make 2,800 robots.
The newest version was launched in late 2016 with a little help from the Canadian Film Centre Media Labs’ Ideaboost program, as well as MaRS and Centennial College’s Kids Media Centre.
To help kids learn concepts around coding, a robot has to be entertaining and engaging, he says. “We want kids to identify with them and start to imbue them with character traits they might want to see in themselves, or are based on someone they know.”
The Friends are made up of various sensors, a microphone and communications so they can speak to each other and other devices. Kids can give theirs special abilities, Argo says. “For example, you could put a robot in a drawer or dark room and arm it to shriek when someone opens a drawer or turns on a light. Or you can turn it into a flickering birthday candle that you can blow out. There are about 20 tricks you can do.”
Alex Hong is co-founder of Robot Playtime, which is part of The Next 36 accelerator program. Robot Playtime is a downloadable app that transforms a phone or tablet at home into a robot.
“When you start, the robot is devoid of intelligence, emotion or personality. It’s up to you as a creator to put that into it using programming blocks,” he says.
Hong says AI has played a key role in lowering the barrier to entering robotics. “A robot can now recognize your voice or avoid something in front of it. All of that is achievable by using AI. There’s is no limit to your imagination in terms of what you can build with it.”