{"id":47,"date":"2016-01-09T16:02:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T16:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techjoysy.wordpress.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2017-01-23T14:22:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T14:22:36","slug":"robotics-for-inspiring-kids-to-learn-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/09\/robotics-for-inspiring-kids-to-learn-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Robotics for Inspiring Kids to Learn Programming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a little girl, I wished I could build a robot similar to the robot &#8220;Vicky&#8221; in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0088610\/\">Small Wonders TV series<\/a>. V.I.C.I. (an acronym for Voice Input Child Identicant, pronounced &#8220;Vicky&#8221;)\u00a0was a robot\u00a0in the form of a 10-year-old girl. Vicky could do\u00a0amazing things like a machine but looked like a human, though without any emotions.<\/p>\n<p>Robotics as a field has evolved so much in the last 20 years that we now have robots that looks like and behave\u00a0like\u00a0humans (humanoids). <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nadia_Magnenat_Thalmann\">Professor Nadia Thalmann<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ntu.edu.sg\/\">Nanyang Technological University<\/a>, my alma mater, has developed a humanoid &#8220;Nadine&#8221;.\u00a0Unlike conventional robots, Nadine has her own personality, mood and emotions. She can be happy or sad, depending on the conversation. She also has a good memory, and can recognise the people she has met, and remembers what the person had said before. Similarly, Erica in Japan has been called the\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2015\/dec\/31\/erica-the-most-beautiful-and-intelligent-android-ever-leads-japans-robot-revolution\">most beautiful and intelligent\u201d android in the world<\/a>. Erica is\u00a0built by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geminoid.jp\/en\/index.html\">Hiroshi Ishiguro<\/a>, professor at <a href=\"http:\/\/eng.irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp\/\">Osaka University<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For my daughter&#8217;s 2nd birthday I built a robot using <a href=\"http:\/\/ohbot.weebly.com\/\">Ohbot<\/a> and programmed it to to sing her Happy Birthday.<\/p>\n<p>She was so excited to see a robot that moves its head, eyes, eyelids and lips. The founders of Ohbot, Dan Warner\u00a0and\u00a0Mark Walker, have done a fantastic job to create a robot that young kids can program using a graphical interface similar to Scratch. It is indeed a great tool to stretch computation thinking in young kids.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the video of Ohbot singing Happy Birthday! Is it time for a\u00a0personal robot to inhabit our homes and help us with\u00a0our lives?<\/p>\n<p>[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t-k2ejohnyk&amp;w=560&amp;h=315]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a little girl, I wished I could build a robot similar to the robot &#8220;Vicky&#8221; in Small Wonders TV series. V.I.C.I. (an acronym for Voice Input Child Identicant, pronounced &#8220;Vicky&#8221;)\u00a0was a robot\u00a0in the form of a 10-year-old girl. Vicky could do\u00a0amazing things like a machine but looked like a human, though without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9,10,13,14,18],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computing","tag-humanoid","tag-learn-programming","tag-nanyang-technological-university","tag-ohbot","tag-robotics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/fullsizerender-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joysyjohn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}