Last week saw the BETT show being held at Excel, London Docklands and on exhibition there were OhBot and MEGOhBOT – a pair of talking and moving head robots constructed on the Isle of Wight.
Dan Warner, and his business partner Mat Walker, have together developed OhBot, a talking robot head that can be programmed to follow simple instructions. This educational robot was created in Gloucestershire and with the invention selling worldwide further development and resizing has taken place with the aid of Martin Warner from Ryde.
These inventions were short-listed for BETT Awards 2016 and after voting were awarded a Highly Commended in a very competitive section, thus putting the invention and the Island on the robot map.
Originally there was just OhBot but the response for this type of robot has been so great across the UK and worldwide that first BIGBOT and then MEGOhBOT were constructed especially for the show.
Primary school children as young as seven can teach Ohbot to tell their parents to “Go and tidy your room”, “To eat up your broccoli” or to “switch the TV off at once!”
Dan Warner, a roboticist, said:
“Ohbot is a brilliant way to teach children the skill of coding – what parents used to call ‘computer programming’. Most children find programming Ohbot really easy to pick up. They’re much better at this sort of thing than their parents.
Ohbot can do so many things. It can talk, move its head, smile and frown. You can programme its eyes to follow you around the room. Ohbot is great for children of all ages from about six. It appeals as much to girls as to boys but what children like most is the way it talks. You tell it what to say and its lips synchronise automatically with the words you’ve given it. I’ve seen so many children make Ohbot tell their parents to behave!”
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Co-creator Mat Walker added:
“Children love accessorising Ohbot. You can make some hair out of pipe cleaners, stick a hat on or give it a pair of sunglasses. Ohbot is different from previous educational robots because it’s in “human” form, rather than “turtle shaped” like the vast majority of robots that have been in schools since the 1960s.”
Unlike most of those old-fashioned robots, Ohbot can talk, display emotions, act, react and solve real world problems. It can be programmed to teach spellings or maths, ask questions and record the answers, even lead a cookery demonstration! You simply plug Ohbot into a PC computer and it’s ready to be programmed. The Arduino based controller now used on the latest OhBot uses software written by Martin Warner, who said that he was sorry that no OhBots have been sold to schools or families on the Island.
Dan Warner and Mat Walker have been taking their invention around schools but they have now released it on sale directly to families. Anyone wanting to buy one simply logs on to www.ohbot.co.uk where costs of £149 for a ready-made Ohbot or £99 for one in kit form can be found.
Dan Warner added:
“Ohbot has been a tiny cottage industry so far but it’s ready to move into the mainstream. We’ve taken Ohbot into lots of schools and they love it but now we’re ready to offer Ohbot directly to parents and grandparents at home.”
The two OhBots built at Ryde (called BigBot and MEGOhbot) are 3 times size demonstration models specially made for the BETT Exhibition, where the OhBot was a finalist in the BETT awards for The ICT Innovator of the Year.
Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan attended the event at the London Docklands and presented an outstanding achievement award to Dominic Savage, the man behind the BETTshow.
After success at BETT show Mat added:
“MEGohbot was seriously the star of the whole of BETT and was probably solely responsible for us being voted a ‘we’d love it in school’ prize in kids’ judging.
“MEGohbot ran faultlessly for 4 days solid and we had many enquiries about buying and hiring it”.
